My Gung Fu Journey

Tag: kung fu

  • Session 19 and 20 – Body Conditioning and San Zhan

    Many weeks overdue post on my latest training!

    So for Session 19 of the White Crane training we did a 2 hour session of Body Conditioning.

    We started with the soft aspects and then went into the hard aspects which was about tensing up as many muscles as possible as we did Tiger and Crane movements where we ended set where we tried to breath out as hard as possible , by that I mean with us out as much air as possible. When done correctly the sound it makes is quite particular.
    After that we took a brief break we then did palm strikes to each others stomachs and then started bashing our arms against each other to condition them. This was obviously quite painful but no where as painful as when we did the same with our shins. We also did side kicks to the each leg (outside part).
    From Memory, this is a list of what we did:
    – Tiger stance wider than shoulder + breathing + tense all muscles
    – White crane shoulder length + tense every muscle in body. Breath from dan tien.
    – Crane hands twice then hands to waist open palm then strikes + comes back and clench sanzhan style.
    – Arms up and then wide / crane coming down.
    – Side kick to shins
    – Arms up and down on both sides and then two high hits and then two lower hits . Humourous bones colliding.
    – Pressing/Resisting with our hands(Wrist) + Then palm strike to stomach
    – Hit each other’s arms using 1 arm to hit each side then swap hand to repeat.

    And for Session 20 this was a workshop covering the Yong Chun White Crane San Zhan form. As mentioned for the previous session we warmed up doing Qigong movements for the first 10-15 minutes. We then proceeded to be shown each section of the form and for much of the remaining class we would repeat this form over and over and over and correct our minor errors. I have a video below of which is the form version we learnt and performed. I will update this Session 20 with more details tomorrow as i try to find the notes i took from the day.

     

     

  • March 2018 Update

    Hi Folks

    Apologises for the lack of Posts. I have done some training since my last post.  One of these was a workshop on Body Conditioning and the other was on the forms  and some grappling drills.

    I have the notes written on my mobile which ill copy/paste into my next post. I will also be reviewing a number of books i have read, these are on Karate and Yong Chun White Crane, all fantastic books and great people that i’ve spoken to directly over facebook.

    So expect to see a couple posts with reviews and my training so far soon.

    Out of Interest, i have added a Poll to this post. Vote which martial art you do i would like to know!

    !

    MA

  • Session 18 – Hello 2018!

    I am back training in White Crane Kung fu! ,my return was delayed for various reasons like those explained late last year.

    So today we started off with slow tai-chi like movement as a form of warm up and then proceeded to do some slow footwork that meant taking one foot and putting it behind us then rotating the whole body , repeating this process until we reached the other side of the room and then back again, to make things more difficult a point in the movement we had to do the body twisting motion where we got as low as possible to the ground and then bringing ourselves back up.

    We then did some grappling techniques , grabbing the wrist with the hand opposite the punch and then turning the body to have the feet parallel, with that completed we then proceeded to push our elbow into the torso or towards the head as an elbow strike. the other variation of this was to proceed to turn the body after bringing the opposite foot forward and turned at a angle so we were then able to complete a full body turn while our own shoulder was pressed against their shoulder, destabilising them. the 3rd variation done before the full rotation destablising technique was to not just do an elbow strike but also use our opposite leg to press our foot against their kneecap to further destablise the opponent.

     

    We then proceeded to do some forms for the remainder of the 1 hour class today. My knees were abit nackered given i have been out of training for quite awhile. But it was great to be back!.

    MA

  • Hi Folks

    Long time no post – Sorry everyone for this.  Life has been very very busy with Work, Wedding preparations and so forth.

    So as soon as my back pain has gone away i will be getting back to training. This will not just be Bai Hi Quan (White Crane) but also i am looking into additional systems to study , this may either be Karate or Taekwondo. Tai Chi is also on the list for me to check out as there is a new instructor in the area.

    It also looks like i have much work to do with the look of the site as well to think about.

    I’ll be posting again soon guys 🙂

    MA

  • Session 13 – 17th January – Back to training

    Session 13 – 17th January – Back to training

    Happy new year!

    I have returned to training today for an hour, we focused primarily on qigong for the first half of the class and then did two variations of the pushing hands and finally i worked on my shuang yang and sanzhan forms. Normally i would do the full session of 2 and a half hours but given i haven’t trained in like 6 months i am easing my way back into the training. The next session is on Thursday. I’ll keep you posted!
    MA