Mark Moran - my official artist profile -alivenotdead.com

The Weekly Wushu Recap (8/9)

My, time flies when you are training hard(ly).

This week had its ups and downs, but for the most part it was good. I’m keeping up with my conditioning workouts after classes, and this week I even had a chance to go check out Ding Wei’s new school in Fremont. If you haven’t heard, the former Sichuan Wushu Team member has started his own school up.

Training at Wushu West

But first, lets get to my training at Wushu West. The one thing I wanted to do, which I didn’t get around to doing is figure out some more details with my nangun form. I’ve got the first two sections pretty much down, and a rough skeleton of the 3rd and 4th. Well, maybe more like a skeleton with lots of muscles and organs clinging to it. Still need to wrap it up in skin and give it a nice hairdoo.

I ended up making some good progress on my nanquan though. I have it all figured out and more-or-less finalized through the 3rd section, and most of the 4th as well. The devil is in the details, as they say, and I still have a few fine-tuning things left to do.

Tuesday’s class was good. I have found a good routine with the workouts where I get to train and teach at the same time. I do the warm ups, stretching and what not with everyone (I’m working on being consistent with these so that everyone gets properly warmed up and stretched out, in other words, no more games where only half the people get a workout and the other half are lazy). After that I do every other line of basics. So I’ll lead the line of front stretch kicks, and then I’ll watch them to correct. It is a good compromise for myself, I think.

Usually I sit out jumps, since I can’t really do them anyway, but I am not focusing a ton on them right now because most of the students really need to focus on their fundamentals (myself included). What is the point of a twist if you can’t even do a proper horse stance? Reardless of competition rules, based on good wushu, you need to be able to do the basics well before you do the aerial techniques. So, as long as I’m leading a class, the basics get the emphasis (but not to the exclusion of any jumps).

Forms are going well. I will usually do that part of class one of two ways:

The first way is how most people do it. Just lots of sections. Running through forms and as people do their stuff I give them corrections. If they need me to, I might teach them the next few movements of their form or make suggestions on things to change. But for the most part I like to encourage people to learn how to self-correct, and analyze their own forms for themselves. I think this is a more valuable skill in the long run, because you never know if you will end up with a teacher or coach that even cares about helping you improve or not. You have to be the person who is the most invested in your own improvement first. Then after you, it should be your coach. If you aren’t commited to getting better, why should they be? Two lane road, y’know?

The second way is how I’ve seen a lot of schools in China do it, and one or two in the U.S. too. Which is to do lines of form combinations. Students pick a small combination of movements from their form that they need to work on/fix/modify/remember/figure out, and work on that combination 3 times down one side of the carpet and 3 times down the other side. Then do a few rotations of that and go to a different combination. It doesn’t have to be full speed. In fact, it is better if the first few times it isn’t, so that you can focus on the technique. Once you get the technique down, you can speed it up and figure out the pacing and rhythm.

So on Tuesday we did sections. And on Thursday we did combo lines with a couple sections thrown in at the end for good measure.

Both classes we did lots of frog leaps and lunge walks at the end, plus conditioning for the abs and shins. Tuesday I forgot the post-class splits training, but I did it on Thursday.

Ding Wei Wushu

Ding Wei

As I mentioned, on Saturday I decided to head down to Fremont to check out Ding Wei’s new school and support his efforts to branch out on his own. It was an interesting workout for a few reasons. (And by “interesting” I don’t mean bad. I just mean interesting.)

First, the class is a little shorter than I’ve become accustomed too. But that is mainly because of China where we would train at least 2 – 2.5 hours each time. And since coming back I’ve even gotten one or two classes up to 3 hours. The classes at Ding Wei’s are an hour and a half, so I was caught a little by surprise at the end when we lined up to salute. I probably should have paid better attention to the clock.

However, the second interesting thing sort of compensates for any shortage of time during class, because they tend to get to basics much faster than we do. In China especially, they tend to warm up and play games for a good 35-40 minutes before stretching. Which, to be honest, I think is sort of a waste of time. At Wushu West I’ve been decreasing the warm up times and taking out the games. We can usually get a good sweat on and be stretching within 25 minutes. But at Ding Wei’s they warm up and stretch on their own in about 20 minutes or so before doing basics. I wasn’t quite warmed up enough and so when we were doing basics my calves sort of cramped up on me. I had to sit out a few lines to let the pain-fire subside a bit.

The other interesting item is that they are (for the time being) holding classes at a gymnastics school. That means they are using the bouncy floor used for floor routines. I definitely wasn’t used to that, and I kept readjusting and tripping over myself when I did my techniques. That, combined with the dodgy quasi-muscle pull I got in Thursday’s class, meant I was pulling my stances up kind of high and not snapping some of my transitions are hard as I should; especially on the left side.

But all of these items aside, I think the most interesting is Ding Wei’s teaching method.

Now, I’m not saying this to put anyone down or push anyone else up. This is just an observation on different methods of teaching.

One thing I noticed with Ding Wei is that he gives a lot of corrections and suggestions. I actually like this. And, truth be told, it has been a while since I’ve gotten any. In China, I would almost never get any corrections from our coaches. Xu Ming Hu didn’t actually correct me other than say “bu cuo” (not bad) and Luo Hong would sometimes not say anything. I mean, I suppose sometimes no news is good news, but I wouldn’t have minded a few corrections on my techniques. But during those 3 weeks I received almost none. Fortunately that wasn’t the case for the other students, as most of them received lots of good comments.

Back when I was training in Shanghai and Shandong I sort of noticed the same thing. And I suppose I have just gotten used to it over time. If nothing else, it has helped me really learn to self-correct and adjust myself during training. But at the same time, I sort of forgot what it was like to have someone really tweaking and adjusting everything you do. At Wushu West I’m usually teaching, so I don’t get trained that much. Once in a while Patti might give me a comment or suggestion, but they are sort of few and far between.

Shan Shan

I think the last time I got a bunch of corrections was when I trained at Ma Jin Long’s school in San Diego in June. It wasn’t him, but one of his assistant coaches, Liu Xiao Tang (or “Shan Shan” to her friends) who gave me lots of suggestions. It actually caught me off guard because I wasn’t used to it. I had to fight the urge to take it as critisism of my form and remember that the comments are meant to help make my wushu better.

So, again, when Ding Wei was coaching me and giving me comments and corrections on my nanquan, it was a bit of a surprise. I wasn’t totally surprised though, since the one other time I’ve trained with him back in 2005 I remember him doing that as well. The main thing I need to remember in those situations is that even if I don’t agree with the assessment of the way to do a specific technique, to not dismiss is just because I might feel differently. One of his suggestions, which at first I sort of thought was strange, actually made good sense after some introspection. So I will probably adopt this in my form (along with a few others he gave me).

This also speaks to Ding Wei as a person. Some coaches are very hesitant to give corrections to someone else’s student for fear of hearing the dreaded “but my coach told me to do it this way!” from the visiting student. I’m a little hesitant as well. But if you are visiting a school, then I think that opens you up to receive that coach’s critiques, and I have a lot of respect for coaches who don’t let their fear of contradicting another coach, or their disinterest in someone who hasn’t signed a school contract, affect their ability to coach an athlete. It shows a confidence in their ability to help athletes improve themselves. Patti actually does this too, which I really appreciate about her. If you come to the class, she will treat you pretty much like any other student in the class and give you corrections and comments, even if you are just there as a drop-in student.

And like I said before, I’m not trying to put anyone down here. This lack of getting critiques really seems to apply mostly to me. With Patti or coaches in China or with other coaches at other schools, most students get lots of great corrections. Maybe it is because I’ve been doing wushu a long time, or maybe it is because they assume I can figure things out on my own, or because nanquan isn’t their forte, but whatever the reason, it isn’t really a good or bad thing. It just is the way it is. I’m certainly not complaining. (see above re: importance of learning self-correcting.)

So, long story short, if you live in the South Bay and are looking for a wushu school, I recommend going to Ding Wei’s. (Of course, all you Upper East Bay folks should head over to Wushu West. )

Sunday’s class was a good one, although I was pretty wiped by the end of it. For the previous three or four days I hadn’t been getting enough sleep — only about 3 – 5 hours a night. No particular reason, just finally readjusting myself to the time zone. But Saturday night I made sure to get to bed at a more reasonable time and managed to get a good 8 – 9 hours of sleep.

But even given that I was still a bit tired since I haven’t really made up for the lack. Class went as usual. We did the form combos type of workout (see above) followed by a few sections. One of the advantages of running class is that I can tailor them partially to what I need as well. On Saturday when I was coming back from Ding Wei’s school on the BART, I figured out my 3rd section. So I used Sunday’s class to hammer out the details. it is coming along now, which is nice.

After class was conditioning — the usual fare. But today my legs were really sore afterwards. I’m glad Monday I’m not training, because I’m not sure I could do another one so soon (which is ironic since I was training daily in China).

So, for this week, here are some of the highlights:

Accomplishments

*Finished 1st section transition for nanquan

*Choreographed and figured out 3rd section for nanquan

*Figured out the basic structure of the 4th section for nanquan

*Kept up with conditioning and training schedule

*Legs are getting stronger

*Flexibility improving (almost have right splits)

Things to Work On

*Better sleeping schedule

*Finish up my nanquan form for GOOD (or at least for now)

*Work on my nangun and get it finalized