Nachi's Log

Discussion in 'Training Logs' started by Nachi, Apr 23, 2015.

  1. icefield

    icefield Valued Member

    Yang Lu Chan was known for his spear work but I'm not sure if he learned this from the Chen's some say they didn't teach him weapons as he was already well versed in them, the spear is also an important training method for developing short range power
     
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  2. Nachi

    Nachi Valued Member Supporter

    Well, I was told that this form - Pear Blosson Spear/White Ape Staff - in particular is a very old one, probably one of the earliest Taiji forms, actually.

    I have no idea about the origin of any spear forms in the Yang style, though.
     
  3. Flying Crane

    Flying Crane Well-Known Member

    Ah, you are doing Chen taiji. That explains the complexity. A Chen derivative was part of my training for over a decade, I learned several empty hand forms, jian, and dao. They are much more complex than the Yang and Sun, which I had also learned a bit of. I was mostly interested in Tibetan White Crane, so when my Sifu took me to his White Crane Sifu and I was able to become his student, I put aside everything else to focus exclusively on that. For me, it was the right choice, but in hindsight I wish I had kept some of the taiji. I no longer remember the forms.

    Getting back to the topic of lots of forms, Ive trained a few systems over the years and had learned a lot of forms. In addition to the taiji and white crane, my first Sifu taught me some Shaolin material, and I had also studied Wing Chun and Kenpo. At one point I think I counted something like 70-80 forms I had learned, in addition to other material not contained in forms. At times I tried to keep up with it all, but it was too much, I was spread too thin and was just racing to practice enough to not forget anything, never mind actually growing my skill. So I downsized when my white crane training improved with my new teacher. It was liberating for me, felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders.
     
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  4. Flying Crane

    Flying Crane Well-Known Member

    Ah, eyou are doing Chen taiji. That explains the complexity. A Chen derivative was part of my training for over a decade, I learned several empty hand forms, jian, and dao. They are much more complex than the Yang and Sun, which I had also learned a bit of. I was mostly interested in Tibetan White Crane, so when my Sifu took me to his White Crane Sifu and I was able to become his student, I put aside everything else to focus exclusively on that. For me, it was the right choice, but in hindsight I wish I had kept some of the taiji. I no longer remember the forms.

    Getting back to the topic of lots of forms, Ive trained a few systems over the years and had learned a lot of forms. In addition to the taiji and white crane, my first Sifu taught me some Shaolin material, and I had also studied Wing Chun and Kenpo. At one point I think I counted something like 70-80 forms I had learned, in addition to other material not contained in forms. At times I tried to keep up with it all, but it was too much, I was spread too thin and was just racing to practice enough to not forget anything, never mind actually growing my skill. So I downsized when my white crane training improved with my new teacher. It was liberating for me, felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders.
     
  5. Nachi

    Nachi Valued Member Supporter

    Sounds like you spent quite some time with Taiji still, since you were able to try three styles :)
    It sounds like a nice MA journey. Are you still training in White Crane?
    It is a pity to forget, but you can always try out some taiji classes again. :)

    Oh, wow, I can't imagin how it would be possible to remember so many forms :D I've been doing karate for bit over 8 years now and 2 years of Taiji and I ever only learned 10 forms altogether. I'll have 11 when I finish the bit I don't know from the spear form :) And I tend to forget details of forms when I don't practice them for a while :D My memory is not that good....
    It sounds like a good idea to let go a bit at this point. You can keep the skills even without the forms. How many forms where you left with then? Or in other words, how many are there in White Crane?
     
  6. Nachi

    Nachi Valued Member Supporter

    Saturday 15.1.

    So being irritated by not feeling that well, yet, four weeks after covid, I googled a bit about long lasting symptoms. Looks like I might have what's called the post-covid symptome - with cough, mildly higher temperature, mild fatique, muscle and joint pain and also rapidly beating heart which happened to me last Tuesday during the day after training that exhausted me. The last several days I also tend to have trouble falling asleep. I go to bed at around midnight, but can't fall asleep for the next 1,5-2 hours. I sleep well after that, so I am not sure if that could be called insomnia, but I learned insomnia or sleep problems are actually a recognized symptom of post-covid, too.
    I decided to really start fighting the symptoms, it just gets on my nerves at this point. According to google, though, there's not much to do aside from getting rid of the cough and eating healthy, plenty of vitamins, doing mild exercises, but not overdoing it. I guess my strategy of holding back with Taiji and doing only a bit of it and avoiding karate for the time being is a good strategy, indeed. Sot that is my plan for now. If at least my cough doesn't get much better by the end of the next week - to set some deadlines for myself - I'm calling or paying a visit to my GP again.

    Food Log
    So today for lunch I prepared a trout baked with butter, lemon and herbs, and got myself just fresh veggies as a side dish and only a bit of cooked potatoes. As Czech Republic is nowhere near the sea, we don't eat fish very often, and they are quite pricey, too, and as we usually don't eat it that often, there are quite a few people not very fond of fish. Liek Sett. But, it is no doubt a healthy meal, so I went for it and hearing this argument he conceded :D
    I also got things to prepare myself some anti-cold tea. My parents gave me dried linden tree and elderberry blossoms, which they gather every year for winter colds. I steeped them with ginger, clove, lemon and added honey. I am going to drink this stuff in the next days. Time to find a big enough jug to prepare enough at once to last me most of the day :D
    Also, since my cough is back to being dry, I am resuming taking Codein that I got from my doctor or will substitute it with cough drops if the cough becomes productive.
    Sett only spoiled my healthy-eating plans with buying sausages for dinner... Oh well, not everything can be healthy, right?

    I feel tired, but I did my 20-min sword practice and as we agreed Sett started teaching me Kururunfa kata. We've never learned any of it, but Sett was suddenly taught to quite a bit of detail at the Christmas seminar - one that I didn't attend as I wasn't feeling too well. Good thing I didn't, I tested positive for covid just the day after.
    I only wanted to learn the first few moves, but ended the practice after no more than 15 mins. Despite it being not really much of an activity at all, I wasn't feeling so well. And without energy for learning and trying to repeat the moves as well as I could, it was pointless. I will try to learn it bit by bit at least roughly.
     
  7. Flying Crane

    Flying Crane Well-Known Member

    Tibetan crane is the only thing I train now, and I’ve got a small group, just two students at the moment, we meet in the park in the early mornings, open air for safety. I could probably get some of the taiji back from my first Sifu, but he has actually begun to streamline as well and has also let some material go. I enjoyed the journey, but ultimately felt that white crane was a good fit for me and was very satisfying for me to practice, and I didn’t need to keep trying to do everything else. I was also a capoeira guy for a bunch of years. As Bilbo said, “I feel like butter scraped over too much toast.”

    i remember when I began to learn the material for my Nidan in Tracy lineage American Kenpo, I was given a list of the requirements. A portion of the requirements included a full dozen new kata. I remember getting this feeling in my gut like this just didn’t make any sense at all, it was just piling on material with no good reason. I actually said to myself, “ I don’t want to learn this stuff..”

    tibetan crane has about 16 or so empty-hand forms, and maybe 12-14 weapon forms. My Sifu also trained Choy lay fut and has kept a little bit of that, some weapons stuff. I have learned 7 empty hand forms, but there are also a couple variations in there so you could count it as high as 11, but I think that isn’t really being honest, and seven weapons, although I’ve forgotten a couple of the weapons forms, hoping for a chance to relearn them. I’ve only actually completed the curriculum through the intermediate level, but it is still a lot, plenty to take a two hour session of hard practice and still not do everything by a long shot. Sifu simply said, “you want to teach? Sure, go ahead.”
     
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  8. Nachi

    Nachi Valued Member Supporter

    Ah, so you do train, that is nice. Having two students sounds pretty good, too. You don't have to stress about official classes, etc., but have partners to train with and who can help you stay motivated :)
    It is good that that journey led you to find an art that was the right fit for you! :)

    Oh, 10 new kata for a single grade? o_O That does sound quite excessive. By my measures, at least. I think I can empathize with your feelings then....

    Yep, still sounds like a plenty of forms. You said you now have two student, but have you had your own school or a larger, formal training group before? Do you enjoy teaching? :)
     
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  9. Flying Crane

    Flying Crane Well-Known Member

    When I was with my first Sifu, he is mostly interested in taiji and bagua, and also is the head coach at the University of California at Berkeley Modern Wushu Team. I did not have any interest in Modern Wushu, and I began with him, studying taiji. At that time I was primarily a capoeirista. I got interested in Tibetan Crane, knowing that he had studied it. So he told me that he had studied crane many years before when he as young, and had not kept up with it, but he agreed to teach me what he could. I appreciated his honesty about it, and so we began, and he taught me privately, in addition to the taiji. I was the only student studying crane. Once in a while, a new person would come into the group and want to do crane, so he would usually turn them over to me to get started. Mostly they didn’t last very long, but one guy did and we kept working together for a while.

    After I had been with him for over a decade, he finally took me to meet his white crane Sifu, and that man accepted me as his student and is now my Sifu. He had a school in San Francisco Chinatown back in the 1970s era, but had closed it many years ago. Now he just teaches a group of four disciples and a couple others including me, in his back yard. That was when the quality of my white crane really began to improve. And that one guy who had started with me in the first Sifu’s group, kept working with me privately and essentially was my student until he moved to China for a couple years to teach English. I encouraged him to train with anyone he met there who he felt was worth working with, but he mostly didn’t find anyone he wanted to do that with. He eventually returned to the US but we never continued training together.

    a couple years ago I moved away from the SF area to the Sacramento area, a couple hours away. That is when I started my own group in the park, once Covid vaccinations were available. In the meantime Ive always just kept doing my own practice, although after my son was born I had a few years where my training as very intermittent, and a forgot some of the weaponry. I keep hoping to make periodic trips back to SF to train with Sifu and relearn what I lost, but Covid keeps not letting that happen. He is in his mid-80s now and refused to get the vaccine, so I am reluctant to join the training again even though it is all in his back yard, in the open air.

    when I was a capoeirista, I was one of the senior students at the time, so I would sometimes run sessions when our teacher needed to be away. So I got some good teaching experience there as well.
     
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  10. Nachi

    Nachi Valued Member Supporter


    Nice! I like how you were able to forge your own path, sticking to what you wanted to do, even if you were the only student of that art of your teacher!
    And then actually being accepted by his sifu like that :)

    I hope the pandemic will soon be over and you'll get to visit your Sifu.
    As I said, it is a nice martial journey! When did you first started learning MA, if I may ask?
     
  11. Nachi

    Nachi Valued Member Supporter

    Sunday 16.1.

    Rest day. Well, I spent a few hours in the kitchen cooking and baking, which was just about the top of my performance for the day. Decided to fight the virus with spicy beef broth Pho-style. I felt like I could breath flames, almost, but I love this food. :D And as I am too lazy or don't have enough time to cook too often, I made a huge pot to last me till Friday (my strategy for every week).
    In the afternoon we went birdwatching with my dad. Mostly just driving the car and getting out near a lake to watch birds. Still, by this point I was really tired and nearly dozed off on the way back. I didn't feel like doing anything else today. So no sword practice, as intended, I just couldn'T force myself. Temperature still 37,1°C, and today I was feeling it. After three days of Codein (though only one pill in the eveninig), the cough seems ot be getting better!

    Monday 17.1.
    Feeling a bit better, but still slept long (well, not that long considering I fell asleep quite late), but spent the day working. I did feel better today, though, so I made sure to do some solo practice. I practised with the sword for 25 mins. We only learned like 4 circling techniques, two of which include a slash. The movements start to feel more and more natural and very comfortable. Also I had energy to try to do the strikes with force and the sword is making very satisfying swishing sounds :D I also practiced on both hands - first all the techniques on the right, when I got tired, I practiced with the left and then right once more.
    Last class the teacher encouraged us to also try practicing with the left hand, why not, he said, if we could learn that, we would at least be better prepared for the double sword form :) It was mostly a joke though, as the form does exist, but nobody learns it at the school.
    The practice felt nice, it actually did give me more energy than took, I think. I then also practiced the first few steps of Kururunfa Sett had showed me. It is only a few steps indeed and as I was warmed-up from the sword practice, it went very well, too. I am clumsy with the techniques that are a bit complicated, but overall it just felt nice and I was getting into it. But thought I'd better not overdo it.

    A sensie from a partner dojo announced the planned seminar next Saturday would be probably focused on kumite. There was supposed to be most likely a kata seminar, but considering how I was feeling the past few days, I decided not to go. Four hours of karate is something I don't think I could do now. But I was a bit sad as I would no doubt regret not learning all those details about the kata that would be taught. So honestly, I am a bit happy it's going to be kumite. I can be without regrets - not only I wouldn't lose out on some kata details, but also I can be more than sure that kumite is really not something I should participate in right now. So I said I won't participate right away.
     
  12. Flying Crane

    Flying Crane Well-Known Member

    I began training in 1984 when I was 13, in kenpo. In college I got into capoeira and after college moved to San Francisco to study capoeira on a higher level, most of the good teachers in the US at that time were in SF and New York City. Then I gradually drifted into the Chinese arts, with a revisit of my kenpo roots in the middle of that, with a high level teacher in the same kenpo lineage that I had trained before.
     
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  13. aaradia

    aaradia Choy Li Fut and Yang Tai Chi Chuan Student Moderator Supporter

    In my original TCC curriculum, we had to learn 3 forms on both sides. 24 step, Plum Blossom Fan and the 32 Gim. They eliminated that when they changed the curriculum a few years ago. I am glad I worked my way up when they still did that.

    Also, I am left handed, so it was nice to be able to use weapons with my strong hand.

    If you have the time to practice the sword with both hands, I recommend it.
     
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  14. Nachi

    Nachi Valued Member Supporter

    Thanks for the explanation! Wow, you've been trainig for very long then. I wasn't even born when you started :oops: I hope I will be able to keep the enhusiasm and will be able to train for as long, too! :)
     
  15. Nachi

    Nachi Valued Member Supporter

    That's cool. I will really have to start trying the other side of the basic form, too! :)

    The thing is the arms gets tired from teh sword a little, so I found out switching to the other hand in order to relax my right hand is a good idea and I can train my left side this way, too. Surprisingly, so far I think I can do well with the left arm, too, but then again, we only had one class so far doing very basic stuff :D
     
  16. Nachi

    Nachi Valued Member Supporter

    Tuesday 18.1.

    Morning Taiji
    I came 10 mins early and grabbed a staff to go through the spear/staff form once to see if I can remember it. At least in this morning classes I want to keep the habit of trying this form once or twice to just keep it in my memory and practice bit by bit. I did have to think a bit and stop a couple of times at the newest movements I learned, but I think I figured it out, so I am simply happy I didn't forget :)
    When class started, we did wuji meditation (my legs wanted to start shaking even here) and then moved onto the whole form - Lao Jia Yi Lu. My knees! Oh my knees! They did NOT hurt! Well, that's a lie, they did, but only a little bit, not at all comparable to last week, when I couldn't do a nearly a single step without pain. I didn't push the stances too low, only natural, though my natural is still toward the lower side. I was seriously happy that without the sudden sharp pain, only a pop here and there, the form flowed much better and I could actually focus on keeping the back straight etc.
    After the form, the teacher had us practice Cloud Hands. I had mixed feelings about that. First I know I'm doing it wrong or that it simply doesn't work too well the way I'm doing it, so it's great I'll get to practice with the teacher's correction. On the other hand I was fully prepared that I still won't be able to fix it or at least not easily, so a part of me didn't really want to do it at all :D The teacher dessected the form to the last detail and gave us a lot of things to focus on at the same time, so I was trying it really slow, but still couldn't focus on everything at the same time. I tried to find something positive about how I couldn't do it and I figured it is good that I can at least tell what's wrong about what I do, even if I am not able to improve it, at least right away. So I focused on a ocuple of additional things on top of what the teacher told us. When he watched me, though, he stopped me right when I tried to correct my turning and shifting weight in the step backward, and explained again, differently. Basically what I thought I was doing wrong originally and focused my mind on correcting, he didn't like that. It's usually like that in the form, but for this particular step, he said, I need to do it the other way around a bit. Aha! The way he explained started to make sense to me and I was finally able to do that one step correctly, after maybe 20 mis of trying in vain, and it also felt much, much better! I get it now. Well, I get it in thery, doing it is another thing...
    The class was over and the teacher realized he wanted to also practice the move after that. He said we'll just quickly do it as there's one thing he wants us to work on at home. We started right from that move and it's where the direction of arm movement changes from Cloud Hands to the Hgh Patting on Horse. But I was completely confused from practicing the Cloud Hands only for the past half an hour and I found myself completely lost how to do that and continued with arms in the Cloud Hands direction. I didn't know how to do it correctly right away, so I looked at the other three people in our group ... and they all did it exactly the same as me XD When the teacher saw us, he rose from his stance, waved his arm: "Ah, or you know what? Let's just work on this next time." :D :D :D

    After the class I found out that not only were my knees quite fine (I was even able to half-rush down the stairs), but my HR was fairly normal this class, too! :)
    upload_2022-1-18_10-54-57.png

    I'm in a good mood today ^^
     
  17. Flying Crane

    Flying Crane Well-Known Member

    I agree that training both sides, particularly sword, is a good idea, great as a brain exercise. But if your arm is getting tired, likely it is because your are not connecting your technique to the full body. Much of that movement ought to be done as the torso turns and rotates. If you are doing it all with the arm and shoulder, you will get tired quickly. I feel that is one of the most important lessons from training weapons in the modern age. It does not let you cheat on your technique, it helps you understand full-body connection.
     
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  18. Flying Crane

    Flying Crane Well-Known Member

    Well, I have had periods of time when I was burned out or had other obligations that prevented me from training. Life has other important things in it and it is good to pursue them as well. So if it happens to you, don’t worry and just be ok with it. Sometimes for me it lasted a couple years or more, but I always found my way back to the training.

    for how long have you been training.?
     
  19. El Medico

    El Medico Valued Member

    Yang's noted for lance.Spear forms in Yang TC seem to be mid to late 20th century. Yang most likely got lance from Chen but I dunno if any have researched this.Yang sword is earlier 20th century.

    Most Chen weaponry is also of 20th century,for example Chen sword.

    P.S. Some say a lot of things about Yang,L-c,such as he was skilled at "Shaolin" when he learned Chen. However his family didn't mention this.
     
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  20. Nachi

    Nachi Valued Member Supporter

    Ah, yeah, I know that XD It was the first thing I was told when trying once before. But... it's easier said than done! :D I will try to figure it out. I am doing my best to move the sword with my body, but I have trouble doing it when the sword goes in the vertical direction of the circle...

    True, thanks for the encouragement.
    I've been training for just about 8 years now - in karate. I added Taiji a little over two years ago.
     

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