Be careful what you wish for....

Pre-pandemic, if you'd asked me what I needed in order to be able to get my #baguazhang training on track, without hesitation my response would have been an emphatic "more time at home". Now that I actually work from home and have regained the lost commuting hours back into my day, though, I find it harder than ever to work up the enthusiasm to practice. Spending all day indoors, with our lovely comfy sofa within arms reach and all the food, drink and spectator-fodder (internet, films, etc) that I can handle has sounded the death-knell for my productivity.

It's really hard to volunteer to do difficult things when so many pleasant easy things are within reach. At least when I went to work, I was out of the house for maybe 10+ hours a day. Going for a walk, hitting the gym or practicing (outside) just meant maybe 30 extra minutes of my day away from home. No biggie.

There are methods for overcoming laziness, of course...

Now, working myself up to any level of activity is a gargantuan task in and of itself. What I'm hoping, though, is that by sharing methods of shaking off the laziness on here might help me to overcome my self-imposed lethargy.

Watch this space!

Getting up early

Taken from an article at: http://www.menshealth.com/fitness/how-to-get-up-early



Squeezing in a workout before the rest of the world is even awake takes an extreme amount of willpower and dedication, and maybe a bit of insanity. But if you work at it, anyone can become an early riser, says Men’s Health sleep advisor W. Christopher Winter, M.D.
So learn from the masters. These six guys get up every morning at 4 a.m. to break a sweat. Here’s how they do it.


Name: John Burk

Location: Fort Stewart, Georgia

Occupation: Instructor at the Fort Stewart Noncommissioned Officer Academy and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Burk’s a former drill sergeant, but that doesn’t mean a 4 a.m. wakeup call comes easy. So Burk remembers an old military mantra to drag himself out of bed: “You may be tired or hurting, but there is someone somewhere training harder to kill you.’”

He then applies that saying to his current goals. Right now, the vet is training for a bodybuilding competition. “All I can see is this blank figure, this silhouette, and he’s training even harder than me to beat me on that stage,” he says.

Want more incentive to get out of bed and into the gym? Check out 6 Ways Your Health Suffers When You Skip Your Workouts.

Make It As Easy As Possible

Name: Richard Rees

Location: Fort Langley, British Columbia

Occupation: Executive director of Rees Family Services, a company that provides assistance for foster children and personal trainer at Rees Personal Training

Rees’ alarm clock goes off at 3:50 a.m., and he’s out the door on a run just minutes later.

His quick turnaround is due to the fact that his clothes, coffee, and breakfast are all ready when he wakes up. Even his socks and the coffee scooper are laid out waiting for him. He doesn’t need to think about anything.

The longer your to-do list in the morning, the easier it is to stay in bed, Rees says. So prepping every last detail the night before eliminates excuses.

(Prep one of these 5 High-Protein Breakfasts You Can Make Ahead to fuel up in no time.)

Remember How Crappy You Feel When You Miss a Workout

Name: Tom Carpenter

Location: Fort Wayne, Indiana

Occupation: Executive at Waste Management and Ironman

There are a million excuses to not get out of bed—you’re tired, it looks like rain, you’re sore. But Carpenter says to ask yourself one question: Have you ever regretted a workout?

The answer is probably no. 

You’ll definitely be sorry you skipped a workout, though. “If I miss a workout, I’m in a bad mood,” says Carpenter. Thinking about that may just be enough to outweigh the pros of sleeping for an extra hour. 

And you don’t even need to go anywhere. You can get a great total-body workout in the comfort of your own home with Bodyweight Cardio Burners, a cutting-edge fitness DVD that packs three intense 20-minute workouts that require zero equipment.


Think about Tomorrow

Name: Joseph Eazor

Location: Atlanta, Georgia

Occupation: CEO of EarthLink, a managed services provider; and Ironman

When Eazor wakes up early to train for 140.6-mile Ironman races, he thinks about the long-term benefits. Sure, devoting early mornings to training will make him faster and stronger. But they’ll also make race day more bearable—maybe even enjoyable, he says. It’s the difference between crossing the finish line with a smile or a grimace on his face.

So remind yourself of the end result—the whole reason you’re doing this. Whether it’s keeping up with your kids in the backyard, going shirtless at the beach, or running your first 5K without getting winded, imagine exactly how you’ll feel in the moment that you conquer your goal.

RELATED: 10 Things All Busy, Successful Men Do

Have a Bedtime Routine

Name: Craig Ballantyne

Location: Denver, Colorado; and Toronto, Ontario

Occupation: Certified Turbulence Trainer and author of Turbulence Training

Getting up early starts the night before. Ballantyne recommends setting an alarm to go off an hour before the time you want to hit the hay. 

Use those 60 minutes to wind down. Stop looking at electronics, make tomorrow’s lunch, or read a book. The goal: Get your mind to shut up so you can go down for a full night’s sleep. 

If you’re still buzzing with ideas or to-do lists, dump it all onto a pad of paper, Ballantyne says. Writing out what’s on your mind will help clear your head.

Sacrifices

Just had to ask the question, "If we're supposed to be on a health kick / intending to lose weight, how many times can we have 'one last takeaway'?"

Mother in law rang up offering a communal takeout. Missus agreed then I countermanded with pesky facts.

Now I am in the doghouse

Pah!

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.

Work-induced stress: Could internal martial arts help alleviate my woes?

At the moment, I am labouring under a cloud. I am stuck in a job I hate with a career going nowhere. Every day at work is like hell on earth. Home is an all to brief respite from the drudgery of a day spent at a company that grinds me down at every opportunity.

Should I be using this, though, as motivation to encourage me to train every evening. Our classes are very fighting/sparring based with lots of applications and two-man drills. But we are occasionally shown the more meditative sides of Gao style baguazhang. I know a few exercises that are purported to reduce stress, so why don't I use these to help combat my crappy workday woes and stresses?

Could be just one more way that my baguazhang training can improve my life. Here's hoping...

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!

More obstacles to training

I could list for you the many things that have prevented my training as regularly as I'd want. There are plenty to choose from. Finally having moved house and having a new home to mould to our taste. Having a crazy, three year old daughter (soon to be 4 - on June 23rd!), the current disruption to the trains (a whole line being closed, causing the once hour long trip to class to be closer to two). However, really, it comes down to my attitude letting me down again. I need to refocus and make myself attend, no matter how awkward getting to class might actually be. Now I have a car, too, gives me even less excuse not to attend. Add to that the fact that we now have a crosstrainer and a heavy bag in our otherwise-unused garage, and I have very little reason not to train at home every evening either. The very thing I've been telling myself will be the key to improvement in my Baguazhang. So, after tonight (cos I am falling asleep while typing this) I am back to training every night and attending every class - no excuses. It is all too easy to let the excuses take over and keep you from your goals. I am taking control of myself again and redirecting my path away from laziness and a flabby gut.

Update

Okay, so house move and all the pressures that go with that along with a decent sized cyst has prevented me from attending baguazhang class as much as I'd like. Really, now I have a new home, with a large living room, spare room, empty garage and decking in the back yard mean I can't really use not having anywhere to train as an excuse anymore. As such, I am working a little practice in when I can. So looking forward to Luo Dexiu coming to do his seminar toward the end of next month, too. He is always so generous and accessible that I never fail to improve my understanding by leaps and bounds when I train with him. Can't wait...

Training

Well, new year has been well and truly seen in and so it is way past time to resume bagua training with renewed vigour.

Using '100 days of Bagua" as both an excuse, if validation is at all needed, and more importantlu as a hashtag to make the log of my meagre strivings easier to find (and pigeonhole).

Managed a little last night but a combination of Marlboro and single malts compromised the effectiveness of the routine somewhat.

IMA training vs Families - Motivation

I've been training Baguazhang for some time now and, probably akin to many other IMAists of my generation, I have also become a father within a similar timeframe.

Naturally, this causes a number of conflicts of interest.  Being a normal, well-balanced human, I place my family at the top of my list of priorities.  Yes, even above my baguazhang training.  Imagine that!?

Equally, though, I am a realist and won't kid myself that I can improve meaningfully relying only on what I glean from one two-hour lesson per week.  I accept that to keep in line with my ambition, I need to enshrine some daily practice into my routine.

However, having a family, my daily routine is pretty full already.  After a day at work and the associated commute, I want to spend whatever quality time I can with my fiancee and daughter.  Add to that the need to relax and de-stress from the hectic day and whatever domestic chores are required and very little time remains.

What I decided of late, though, is that my baguazhang training is important to me.  I want to improve and find myself a more capable martial artist within the next few years.  With that in mind, I have decided that my second priority will be my training.

If I have so little time, though, how will that help?  Family taking all my time (and justifiably so) will mean that my baguazhang will end up like the Mad Hatter's jam.  (Always tomorrow, never today).

Even with a busy lifestyle and pressing commitments, I still find there are many times in a given week when I am, essentially, 'wasting time'.  Playing around on the laptop, surfing on Facebook or playing pointless little games.  Slobbing on the sofa watching a tv programme I don't really care for.  All those times, rather than killing time with something that doesn't matter to me, I could have been practising my bagua.  Wasted time.

It will take quite some discipline, but I intend to stop myself from doing these wasteful tasks and practice my bagua instead.  This includes, horror of horrors, actually getting up an hour earlier than normal to do an extra hour of bagua in the mornings.  Again, that will take quite some discipline, but it is acheivable.

Eventually, I hope to get myself up to around 90 - 120 mins of bagua practice per day (probably with weekends off as we often end up going places where it isn't always convenient (or strictly polite) to engage in practice.

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.

Internal MA 'Epiphanies'.

One thing my Bagua instructor warned me about, almost immediately upon my resuming my MA training, was regarding the progress curve.  External martial arts, he said, has a pretty slow but steady rate of improvement during which you get steadily better and better over time.

Internal martial arts, he said, are different.  You train for ages without really feeling you get anywhere.  Then, all of a sudden, WHAM!  There's a big(-gish) leap in your understanding and ability.  I had one of those epiphanies, I think, during Friday's class.

All of a sudden, something he said (I forget precisely what just now) just resonated with me and I found it much easier to give my stance structure - more strength and structure than I'd had before, to be honest.

I did, however, find that a day out walking around in the cold on the Saturday made me feel like I'd injured myself.  Really, I think a combination of an overworked muscle group and the cold weather made me feel a few aches and pains for some days aferward.

That said, I am better now - so back to full training again tonight.

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.

Better second time around

Back when I was in my twenties (not so very long ago) I used to train in a different martial art.  I studied Lau Gar Kung Fu for around five years or so.  I really enjoyed it and attained my yellow sash (around 6th kup, if I recall correctly).  I still have the certificate.

One thing I found, back then, though, was that I didn't really have the required attitude to be a good fighter.  I was too soft.  Too much of a hippie, maybe.  Or a fragile soul...

Now, some years later I must have grown (or devolved, depending on your viewpoint) as I now feel that I really can enjoy sparring a little more than before.  As such, while I am still not, perhaps, in the prime condition I was back in the 90s, I do feel I have a much better attitude this time around.

I think a lot of people focus purely on the physical side of martial arts and give barely a second thought to the mental side - or, at least, to what attitude they have when they train, or when they spar (if, indeed, they do).

I am going to focus more on trying to develop the kind of attitude and discipline that I hope will help me succeed and get more from my martial arts than the all-too limited time my work and fatherhood allow me to spend on training.  I don't want to sacrifice my family for my training.  Time with them is sacrosanct.

Change of routine

As I am babysitting on Friday, this week I attended the Tuesday night Bagua class.  This class is more fighting oriented.  I enjoyed it immensely, but I realised just how much improvement I need - for one, my timing is awful.

Ideally, I would like to be able to attend both classes each week.  For the time being, two evenings in the week where I get home well after Freyja has gone to bed are just too much.  Especially when I am also getting home late one other evening in the week to do overtime at work (gotta pay those nursery fees).  Wonder if I can get a National Lottery grant to pursue my Bagua?  It is an art, after all...

Still, for now, I will simply attend the Tuesday night class now and then.  On top of that, we have Luo Dexiu's seminar soon that I will try to attend as much of as possible.  Then later, hopefully, I can eventually devote more of my time to my Bagua.

http://www.manchester-bagua.org/

These are the times when it's hard to attend class

Now that my daughter has started nursery, that is a bill of around £175 a week that needs to be paid from somewhere.  The place it is being paid from in our case is a load of overtime that I am doing in the callcentre at work.  I do an extra shift of 9am - 1pm every Saturday, and an extra two hours, 5.30pm - 7.30pm on a Wednesday evening, after my normal working shift.  I may well end up doing more, but even as it is, that all tallies up to quite a bit of time I spend away from home.  Away from my daughter and fiancee.

Last night, Manchester Metrolink was kind enough to fail and cause me to get home about 90 minutes later than usual.  That pretty much puts a stop to what little interaction I do get with my daughter of an evening.  Now, tonight is bagua class.  While this is something I do for myself and my own enjoyment - and I do enjoy it a great deal - when I am missing my time at home, another night where I don't get in until around 9.30pm is not something to which I'm looking forward.

But at the moment I am noticing more and more the benefits I am reaping from what little training I am able to do.  My balance is seemingly infinitely better.  My stamina is much improved, I even run for the tram now and then (when they are working!) and this is something I never did before.  Add to that the exercises I had difficulty with a year ago being much easier (or less difficult, might be a better way to put it!) and I see that, long term, attending my bagua class (at least) once a week is a sacrifice well worth making.

My daughter is 8 months old and will soon be running around.  Being fit enough to play with her and keep up will pay its own dividends soon enough.