Last week's professional training plan
Since Monday was a holiday I didn’t have to go to work. This meant I had the day free and could go to the wushu guan as per my Monday plan. I spoke with Yuan Min on Friday and asked him if there was a workout at 3pm on Monday but he said he didn’t know yet. So I told him I would send him a message on Monday morning to find out for sure.
Fast forward to Monday morning and I sent him a message to ask if it was okay for me to train or not. He said it was okay and so I made plans to head over there at 3 PM after having lunch with some friends.
As I was riding up I saw a few of the Shaanxi Team athletes walking around. I waved at them as I rode along on my scooter, not thinking too much about it. As I rode up to the wushu guan entrance I saw Jiang Yang and one of the taiji guys come out. I asked if Yuan Min was in the wushu guan and she said no. They didn’t have training today because of the holiday. Well, I figured that since Yuan Min said I should come in the morning that he’d probably be on his way and I would just go up and wait for him.
But I tried calling his cell anyway. No answer. I sent him a message: “where are you?”, also no reply. But I went to the wushu guan anyway. If he showed up I should at least be warmed up and ready to go so I put on the wushu shoes and did the standard warm up routine.
Just me and Mr. Taiji
The wushu guan was empty except for one taiji guy on another carpet doing his own thing. Just the two of us in a huge wushu guan.
I considered just going home, since it seemed that nothing was going to happen. But then I thought about where I was and what I was doing and realized that a lot of people would kill for the opportunity to have an afternoon alone in a professional team’s wushu guan. I didn’t want to squander that unique situation so I decided to just go ahead and do my own training.
So, warm ups. Run around the carpets. Jump rope, stretching. Then basics — kicks, stances, combos — and then I went through the form several times. The new one that I had just learned. Slowly at first, and then with increasing speed.
I pulled a muscle in my upper hamstring. Not a huge pull — just uncomfortable. I stretched it out a bit and kept going. Muscle pulls are part of the deal when you practice wushu. Suck it up. Keep going.
After forms I did my conditioning. Abs, pushups and horse stance. My panting filled the emptiness of the wushu guan. I’m sure the other guy was wondering why I wasn’t using my inhaler to calm my asthma. No asthma. Just out of shape.
I ended up training for about 90 minutes total. Around 4:35 PM I called it a day and did my cool-down stretching routine. I was pretty happy with my performance. I had a choice and I think I made the right one.
Of course, no videos today because it was just me and Mr. Taiji. As I left the wushu guan we waved goodbye to each other. He reminded me of something Wu Di told me.
When Wu Di first joined the Beijing Team he was one of the worst athletes there. But he decided he wanted to be one of the best so he would train harder than anyone else. In the evenings, when everyone else was resting in their dorm rooms he would go back to the wushu guan to work on his forms and techniques. He did this for a year or two — just working tirelessly on his own to improve.
This is what it takes to be a high level wushu athlete. The initiative to take responsibility for your own improvement. No one else will do it for you so you have to do it for yourself. A commitment to your own excellence.
I have a feeling that Taiji guy is going to be pretty good someday.
PS: By the way, I found out later when Yuan Min and I connected through text messages that the team had trained in the morning. Of course, had I known that I could have just gone there in the morning and trained with them instead. Oh well. He did say that I was welcome to come to any day’s 3PM training. I had to remind him that I worked every day from 7:30 – 5PM and that it wasn’t something that I could do easily.
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Always learn something when you train alone. I do it all days except thursdays when i train with my master. It’s not the best but she don’t has more time.
I think when you train alone you can feel better your body, your breath and your sensations. Probably, you have a better concentration and that’s very important.
Too true. Its very helpful to be a little retrospective about one’s wushu. I remember a prominent athlete once telling me that he used to think about his wushu 3 times more than other people, which was the reason for his success in competition. He didn’t train more — he just through about training more — working through forms in his head and figuring out the details within himself. Too true.