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.

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.