Weekly Wushu Recap (10/23-31)

I have been a bit remiss in blogging due to an overabundance of work and responsibilities.  But I wanted to post up some notes from my second week of wushu training with the Shaanxi Wushu Team before it completely skips my mind.  (I’m actually coming up on the end of the third week as I write this, but first things first.)

October 23 (Friday)

After that first practice, I made my way back to the wushu hall and got there a bit early.  I had only worked out once so far so the soreness hadn’t hit me yet.  This time the nanquan group (about 5 of us) worked out on the far carpet.  Lots of nanquan basics. It seems that this group had been given the directive to just work on tons of basics since they had recently switched over from changquan to nanquan.  I certainly need the basics work so I joined in doing as much as I could.

I tried to push myself a bit since I knew that I would have the weekend off.  And boy was I sore!  Primarily in my shoulders, since my upper body hadn’t done any punching work in quite a while.  But it was a good sore and even though I was hobbling around during our trip up the mountain, I still was glad to be back training.

This week I was also able to make a few friends.  I exchanged QQ numbers with one guy who was originally from Heze, Shandong.  He’s been with the Shaanxi Team training for 5 years and is 17.  He actually looks a lot like He Jing De.  I mentioned that to him and they all knew who HJD was.  I was surprised since it had been quite a few years since he had competed, but I guess his name still carries some impact among wushu circles.  He WAS pretty darn good, after all, even though he didn’t end up placing well in competition.

The youngest Nanquan Kid is named Xin Rue and he totally reminds me of that bagua kid from the Bejing Team who doesn’t train anymore (some of you know who I’m talking about).  Oh, and there is another kid who just arrived from Guangzhou.  So I can practice my limited Cantonese with him.  He just arrived to train in Xi’an along with this girl from Zhejiang who does Changquan.

I’m going to try to take some photos of them if I can, but my small digital camera’s photo functionality is broken and it only takes video at the moment.

However, I was able to take another little clip of the inside of the wushu hall, which you can see here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny0o4o_Hv7k

October 26 (Monday)

I was back and raring to go.  Due to the unpredictable nature of the buses in Xi’an, I usually try to get to the wushu hall a bit early.  It is also good because it takes me a while to warm up and I like being able to hang out in that big hall by myself.

Once again we were separated out.  I noticed this time that there are two groups with the nanquan people; those who have a form and those who don’t.  Three of the guys work on higher level stuff, and on this day, while the “newer” nanquan kids were working on basics on one side of the room, Yuan Ming had us do sections.

The first time through we just walked through with no jumps or anything (not that I ever do jumps these days), so there were 4 slow sections (that still managed to get me winded).  Then we did full speed sections.  It seems that the other guys are all doing a variation on Yuan Ming’s form.  I got to see him train a little bit too and boy are his basics strong.  Just a quantum leap above the nanquan of the other guys.

I was only able to get through 2 or 3 sections at full speed.  Then I had to call it quits and did wall sits on the side.  Yuan Ming was pretty understanding though and mentioned that even with the professional athletes, when they come back from a break in training it is difficult for them to get back up to speed too.

October 27 (Tuesday)

When I arrived on this day I was surprised to see the wushu hall filled the brim with kids doing wushu.  Maybe 70 or so of them on various carpets with various coaches working through combinations and basics.  I later figured out that these were all those kids that I would previously see on the track doing basics, but a few times a week they also got to come to the wushu hall to train on carpets.

Their levels have quite a range.  From kids who look like they were brought to their first class a few days before, to kids who can almost get their 720.  But this was basically the training ground where they nurtured athletes who would someday train in the group that I was with.  And then, if the group that I was with got good enough, they might someday represent the team as a professional athlete.

Anyway, right at 3:00 on the dot the whole lot of them packed up and left as the 3:00 group came in to the hall.

This practice was more or less the same.  The change today was that I worked out with the New Nanqan Boys (their new boy band group name) doing a ton of basics while the Form Factor (the other groups’ goy band name) worked on nangun basics.  Truth be told I would have rather worked on nangun basics because I haven’t done them in forever, but it isn’t like I don’t need to work on ANY of my basics, y’know?

I talked with Yuan Ming about getting a nangun too.  He said I could pick one up for about 20 RMB from the school.  I also mentioned to him that I wouldn’t be there on Wednesday because I had to go take care of the visa extension on my passport (actually I told him that my “thing has a thing I have to do at the police station”, because I don’t know how to say most of those words in Chinese).

But on Wednesday he sent me a text message letting me know that there was no practice on Thursday so that I should just come on Friday.  Well, that was actually okay with me because (1) I was ridiculously sore and (2) 3 classes in my 2nd week was good.  I could gear up adding a class each week until I got back up to speed, which was good for the old bod.

October 30 (Friday)

On this day he had me workout with the athletes who were preparing for competition at the Chinese Traditional Wushu Tournament, being held on November 6 in Jiangsu Province.  The New Nanquan Boys (NNB) were doing their thing under Yuan Ming’s watchful eye.

The one thing that I got to see on this day (besides a bunch of teenage boys pretending to work through their traditional forms (fanzi, meteor hammer, shaolin quan, etc.) was Yuan Ming really bust out some nanquan.  It was from across the room, but a few times my jaw literally fell into my lap.  He is QUICK.  Like crazy quick.  Why wasn’t he competing? I remember hearing from Wu Ya Nan that he had some issue or injury or something, but I didn’t get the specifics.  Well, he sure was good.  I found this video on  youtube of his competition:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfbtgiFh8vM

If you look at his technique to get in to the low stance at 0:27, his arms are REALLY fast.  He looks even faster in person.

After this practice I did some frog leaps too, and more wall sits.  I’m trying to work in a bit of conditioning when I can.

One thing I would see a lot as I was leaving the Sports Center is kids at the track.  There were usually two variations.  Either it was gymnastics girls running miles and miles and miles around the track in their big ski pants, or it would be leagues of wushu kids drilling basics and conditioning.  Not sure what they all are going to do once the REAL cold weather kicks in, but for now they are doing a lot of working out.  Here is a clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAhe7PeUl3c

I also took a clip of some of the campus at the Sports Center.  This shows some of the athlete dorms as well as the long road I walk down to get from the bus stop on Tang Yan Lu (road) to the Wushu Hall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPtJ5eXj_qo

And once again I had two days off to recouperation.  The next week the professional athletes and main coaches would all be back from their post-All China Games hiatus, so I was looking forward to seeing them in action!  I was a little concerned about what the coaches would say about me training there, or if I would be strapped with some huge bill, but it turned out that I didn’t have to worry about that sort of thing … yet.

To be continued …