1,000 Days of Bagua? A challenge accepted (again!)

Yesterday, I posted to my feed on www.fitocracy.com:

Bored at work, I calculated that, if I did baguazhang training every day from tomorrow (1st Feb), then by 28th Oct 2020 I would have completed 1,000 days of consecutive training. That appealed to me and, in an effort to instill a daily training routine, I have decided to take up the challenge! #baguazhangeveryday #1kbgz #bgzed



I've attempted stuff like this before and often failed miserably after a relatively short stint of daily training. But I found not so long ago that I can quite easily work 15-20 mins of bagua training into my working day without impacting my job, stress levels or sanity. So, I really don't have any excuse why I am not training every day.

My 1,000 days of Bagua challenge started today, and I am already 20 mins in!

Wish me luck!

Making a sandwich...

Excellent class tonight.

Discussed the idea of quality and quantity of daily training.  Something I've mentioned on this blog before. 

The analogy of having a sandwich was used.  While it is possible to make the perfect sandwich (steak and onions with lettuce, tomato and English mustard, on a granary baguette, maybe?) with the right amount of time and resources, sometimes a piece of bread and dripping is all you can manage.  Or maybe a helman's sarnie spread butties?

If all you can manage is 10 mins, that's.  If you've got the time but can't be arsed,  just do something simple.

Doesn't matter what you do...  Only that you do.

Makes it much more enjoyable,  too - and creates a playful mindset.

Working Bagua into your day.

The most difficult obstacle to daily practice for me has been the idea that I need to train all in one go.  For the average, western bagua player with a family, taking 60 minutes or more out of your day to train isn't really viable.  Not all in one go, at least.

I find that I can manage 20 mins after I get up in the morning or alternatively before work sometime.  10-15 mins can be racked up during my lunch hour at work.  Then maybe 40+ mins before bed.  So, on a good day, I can manage well over an hour of practice.

Even being more conservative than that, 5 or 10 mins here and there is much better than nothing.  Who can't spare 5 mins a few times a day?

So, really, even at my busiest or laziest times, there is no excuse for not practicibg Bangazhang every day.

Dealing with inevitable lapses and obstacles

Returned to class at Manchester Bagua last night after quite a few lessons missed. A number of things have hampered my attendence - not least of which the closure of a whole train line which increases my travel time home considerably. Now, however, we have a car and the classes are back on!

It really felt like a homecoming. It felt so right to be back in class and I was pleasantly surprised both by how much I still knew and how much strength/technique I'd still maintained.

It was a relatively small class last night, this heat wave here in the UK is, after all, "beer garden weather", as they say. While disappointing to see, that was cool in some respects as it made the class more personal and, of course, made for more one on one attention from teacher for those of us who had turned up.

Now I'm settled into our new house, I have a much better situation for training at home. I have a large living room (which has room enough to walk a decent circle), a spare room (currently full of boxes and assorted stuff - but it has potential), a garage (again full of detruitus, but with enough room left for some practice) and even a garden for when the weather allows outdoor practice/scaring the neighbours.

The garage even has my wife's new crosstrainer (useful for warmups, maybe?) and my new 5ft heavy punchbag. It hasn't been hung yet, but leans provocatively against the garage wall. Soon, then, I hope to have something close to a personal training space. Once I pull my finger out and clear the garage before hanging the bag.

Still, first priority is to reinstill my daily training habits at this new address.

Watch this space!

Needs must...

With our home life being so chaotic right now, I feel quite proud of myself having just managed 10mins of bagua practice in my lunchbreak here at work.

Wasn't very dignified, jiben shou fa in a toilet cubicle - but felt productive nevertheless!

Long awaited update

All the usual apologies for the delay in bringing this update to you. This was mostly due to losing my password, making me unable to log in from work or my mobile which, between them, account for 99% of the updates on this here blog. So, what is there to tell you, dear reader? Well, my attendance is back to normal at Manchester Bagua class. Speaking of which, it is that I am blaming for the achey nature of my shoulders and serratus muscles today, some three days later. Stuck here at work at the moment, but planning some more training for tonight. Went for a walk at lunch which involved a light to medium workout for my calves. As it was threatening rain at the time, though, that only lasted about 15 minutes or so.

More obstacles to training

Okay, so it has been ages since I attended baguazhang class. Other than the odd chance here and there to eat bitter, I have done very little in the way of training full stop. That said, the main reason for this lapse is that we are currently looking for a new home. This is taking up a lot of my time. I reconcile myself with the thought that, once we get moved, I will have a garden in which to practice and, hopefully, a spare room that can double as a baguazhang/yoga room (my wife does Iyengar yoga). So, in the long run, I am envisioning my bagua routine to improve by virtue of no longer being confined to a small apartment where I can only really practice jiben shou fa and a few, limited, lines and forms. Imagine having a whole garden to walk a proper circle in! :) So, watch this space and hopefully I will soon be coming to you with tales of extended practice sessions out in the summer heat.

Dedication to Tyr

I have made what you might call a resolution to up my training significantly.

I also hope to train wiser and target those areas in which I am currently lacking.

When I think about it, it is such a small thing to include more bagua practice into my day.  The reality of my life, though, is that there is always something else that could also be occupying any time I do give to training.

I guess I just have to accept that I need to prioritise my bagua to ensure I get more training done.  Sacrifices might even have to be made.

Long live meatspace!

Most mornings, when I am enduring the tram ride to work, I notice that the vast majority of my fellow commuters* are somehow 'tuned out' of what is going on around them.  Either they are tickling their smartphones, their ears are plugged into some music device or they are lost in an e-reader.

Somehow, as a people, we seem to have lost the desire or ability to connect to the environment immediately around us.  Preferring instead to talk to someone miles away who isn't even a good enough friend to be with them in person.  Personally, I would prefer to witness and react appropriately to what is going on around me.  The driver's announcement being a convenient case in point this morning.  The line was down for a while.  Not that most of my fellow passengers would realise, as it was back up again fairly soon.

This doesn't just happen in the mornings, either.  At any time of day, the number of people around me either literally or figuratively 'plugged in' to some electronic device, draining their attention, is considerable.

I read something on a lifting site that said, "If you've got time to Facebook, then you've got time to train...".  This paraphrasing my earlier sentiments that I would now rather train than watch something I don't particularly like on tv.

What do each of us actually get from spending more time online?  The illusion of a social life?  How social are you if you hardly ever actually see your friends?  If I train, it might not be very rock and roll, repeating the same action again and again ad nauseam.  But I do get something at the end of it all - eventually.

That's why I'm shifting more and more of my endeavours into 'meatspace' (and why I'm posting on here less and less - sorry!)

Daily devotions or going through the motions?

I am currently managing, despite a family to look after and a lazy streak a mile wide, to train at home every night. Okay, so I'm not exactly running through all eight big palm changes or completing all the houtien lines in sequence, but I am managing to do a little.

I am concerned that my less than impressive physique is letting me down in class, so I've mostly been working on strengthening.  Once I am happy with that, though, I assume the nightly training will have become a habit and then I will simply substitute the strength training for something with a little more emphasis on technique.

Considering I know how adept I am at avoiding committing to anything, disliking exertion as I do, I am quite proud of myself.

Building muscle

[See link to right of the screen, under "Build your Physique!"]

Here's a (kindle) book on the Sandow method of body building which is not only a good guide to building muscle and developing mind-muscle connections/awareness but also an interesting read about how older training methods in body-building and boxing have been unfairly dismissed and discredited.

It is a very good read, informative and could help you develop your physique with just 20-30 minutes training per day.  Already, it has amassed a few, very positive reviews.  For the cost of a kindle book and the time in which you'd normally watch 'How I Met Your Mother', you could have the statuesque body you've always wanted.

Nappies Before NeiGong II: The Training Montage

Okay, so my '100 days of Bagua' is taking a really beating as often I find myself doing little more than some basic leg-strengthening or even ten minutes of stancework as my daily practice.

When you have a baby (8 months old and already into everything), there are simply many more pressing issues than perfecting your crashing palm that have to be attend.  Even once they have been attended to, often exhaustion means the last thing you feel like doing is racking up an hour of stance work.

But here are a few ways I have managed to combine training into my daily routine/babycare regimen.

1. Chickenstep whenever pushing baby's pram.
2. Engaging calf muscles whenever walking or pushing pram.
3. Practicing Jiben shou fa in toilet cubicles at work (not ideal, and strive for the cleanest cubicle possible, but saves embarrassment and awkward questions).
4. Squatting rather than bending down to pick things up/access low shelves.
5. Holding various (innocuous) stances on tram to and from work.
6. Sitting down and getting up from chairs using one leg at a time.
7. Standing on one leg whenever motionless for a while.
8. Lying with kwa open while watching tv.

They are hardly in-depth exercises that will unlock bagua's secrets for me (with the possible exception of the jiben shou fa), but they do allow me to maintain momentum in my improvement more than if I had simply done nothing between those all too infrequent training sessions.