Getting Back on the Horse … Again (Plus Angelica Cukon!)

And so I made my way back to wushu class with the Shaanxi Wushu Team.  Over 2 months away from training and I don’t think I need to tell you that it was a bit on the painful side.  2 days later now, and I’m really starting to feel it in my hamstrings — but it is a good kind of sore, not the bad kind of sore.

When I showed up the door was open and no one was there yet, but I was a little early.  I put on my budosagas and waited for the athletes, who showed up promptly at 9:00.  I got some surprised faces, since they hadn’t seen me in a while.  Han Laoshi said hello and had Xiao Yu translate some information for me regarding some training requests I had put in to him from other foreigners.  It has taken him 6 MONTHS to finally get back to me with this information.  But apparently he had to get permission from the head of the facility or something.

Anyway, class started up.  I looked at the weekly schedule on the wall.  This week my plan was to go on Tuesday and Saturday morning (I think I mentioned that in the last blog).  Fortunately both of those days had wushu practice scheduled so I was good to go.

Being the first day back I didn’t try to kill myself.  I just wanted to get back in to the groove of things.  I warmed up with them as much as I could.  My calves were super tight from 2 months of no stretching so that was tricky.  Basics started and I tried to focus on some fundamentals like front stretch kick and horse-bow stance transitions.  I worked on those during their nandu training too.

Around the time they started forms training Yang Min told me to grab my nangun to work with some athletes he was overseeing.  It turns out there is a Compulsory Forms (guidin taolu) competition in Wuhan on June 5th.  A few of the guys in our group were going to be competing and so I worked through sections with them.  I hadn’t reviewed my nangun in a while so I spent most of the time working on the first two sections, trying to remember how they went.  The other kids were working on the new compulsory staff (2) and spear (1) and one kid also did some of the old compulsory Changquan.

That lasted about 30 minutes or so.  There were just 5 of us, so rotating sections took a bit out of me — granted I wasn’t really going full out, but mostly just walking through sections.  It was a good workout either way.

After class I spoke with Xiao Yu and Coach Zhang for a while, just talking about random stuff.  I walked out with Xiao Yu who was going to lunch.

My plan Saturday is to try to push myself a little farther still.  Each class I will up the ante and put more in to the training.  So, I have a few days of healing and recuperation before the next class.  I think I’ll need it.

Later in the day I made arrangements with Angelica Cukon (pictured below), who was visiting from Italy, to meet up for dinner in the evening.

Angelica Cukon in Xi'an (Taken from alivenotdead.com)

We ended up going to the Shandong BBQ place next to my house.  It was me, Ruhi, Angelica, and two of her friends — James from New York (not to be confused with our other friend James from New York) and another friend from Chile.  We had a great time talking and telling each other funny stories.  It was nice to finally meet her in person after all this time only knowing her online and from AliveNotDead.  (Angelica’s Chinese is crazy good, by the way.)

Unfortunately she will be heading back to Europe later in the month, but the good news is that she plans on returning to Xi’an later in the year.  I will probably see her again when I get back from my summer U.S. trip in September.  Good timing since I will have a bit more time available then.  Maybe we will even get to train together!(?)  Us nanquan people have to stick together, right?

Anyway, this week I have a lot of work going on so it is a good thing I’m only training twice.  I will provide another training update after Saturday.

Related posts:

1. Almost back to training!