Ving Tsun Kung Fu: Focus On The System

There are thousands of Moy Yat Ving Tsun practitioners, but very few of them will achieve the caliber required to become a legitimate Moy Yat Family Sifu. It takes around ten years of dedicated training under one’s Sifu and literally thousands of training hours (10,000+).

The Sifus of the Moy Yat Family put an extraordinary amount of work into passing down the Ving Tsun system. Grandmaster Moy Tung has spent his entire adult career dedicating himself to the art of Ving Tsun under his Sifu, Moy Yat, who did the same with his Sifu, Yip Man. Sifu Moy Sup Tung of the Austin school continues that tradition of hard work, dedicating himself to his Sifu, Moy Tung, and the Moy Yat Family by passing the pure, unchanged Ving Tsun system down to his students and grandstudents. Because of the dedication of Sifus, the Kung Fu that is taught today is the same as the Kung Fu that was taught to Moy Yat by Yip Man.

In order for the Ving Tsun system to continue to be passed down to future generations and preserved in its purest form, it is important to remember that the focus of our school should always be on the Kung Fu.

During the course of your training, you will encounter distractions. One of the most common is the temptation to socialize. Talking during class should be kept at an absolute minimum out of respect for the Ving Tsun system and to avoid disrupting the focus of other students. The Ving Tsun school is a place of study, not a social club, or a networking opportunity for students to build their own interests outside of Kung Fu. 

Another common distraction is the tendency of students who are young in their Kung Fu to compare their progress to others’. Seeing other students playing more advanced forms or working on chi sau can be exciting, but it can also distract by making you want to skip over your current training to “advance” through the system more rapidly. It’s good to be excited about what you’ll learn in the future, just be sure to stay focused on the Kung Fu that your Sifu wants you to work on at the moment. Everything else will come in time.

Remember that your Sifu is passing the Ving Tsun system down to you. The details that he teaches have been acquired over the course of decades of study with his Sifu and the Kung Fu family. It’s these details that combine to make up the Ving Tsun system; they’re very important and students should pay careful attention to them. If Sifu gives a detail in class, it should spread through the school like wildfire, with students putting effort into actively focusing on that detail until it becomes ingrained habit.

While details should be shared between students, it is never a student’s job to teach another student. Only Sifu, or people he has specifically trained to instruct the system, should be teaching. This ensures that the system is being honored and passed down pure and unchanged.

Do your best not to fall for any distractions you may encounter inside or outside the school; stay focused on your Ving Tsun. To show respect to all the dedicated work of your Sifu and the Sifus that came before him, all you need to do is show up to class on time, wear your uniform, pay attention to what’s going on around you, train consistently, and represent the school well. This Ving Tsun work ethic will serve you well in all areas of life.

2016 Women's Workshop: A Mighty Family

3:30am - Scramble to shush my alarm before it wakes anyone else. My husband and kids aren’t crazy enough to be getting up this early; that’s all me. I have this morning planned down to the minute. Hell, I’ve been preparing for this morning for weeks, resting and eating right and generally pouring on as much self-care as I possibly can to ensure that my madcap illness will let me do all the things I want to do for the next three days. This is my first time ever travelling out of state for a Kung Fu workshop, y’see, and I’m determined to make sure everything goes right. I jump into the world’s fastest shower, scoop up my pre-packed bags, and slip out the door.

4:15am - Pull up to Simo’s house. I don’t even have time to wonder if I should knock or text to let her know I’m there before she’s opening the passenger door and climbing in. Good, no precious seconds lost. We cruise through the sparse traffic of a barely conscious city, on our way to the airport to meet the other ladies with whom we’ll be traveling. I’m all over my phone, navigation and clock, are we where we should be at this moment? Are we ahead of schedule? I get a little smug about how well it’s all going.

4:45am - Score a princess parking spot in the airport’s long-term lot and hustle to catch the little bus that’ll take us to the terminal. I check that I’ve got all my bags as the bus trundles away from the parking lot. Pretty sure we’re exactly on schedule to catch our flight, but probably I should double check the time.

4:55am - Realize that I left my stupid phone in my stupid car.

Looking back, I can pinpoint this as the first of many (many, many) kung fu lessons of the weekend. I could either pitch a hissyfit and burn a bunch of energy that my sickly self really couldn’t spare on something that would achieve nothing more than making everyone’s life difficult, OR ... I could just take a breath, laugh, and go with the flow of fate. Honestly, I was about to fly 1400 miles away from home to learn Ving Tsun from Grandmaster Moy Tung … what on Earth did I need my phone for? Was I gonna live-tweet about the workshop? Scroll through some Tumblr memes in between rounds of tsui mah? Pffft.

So I caught Simo’s eye. Told her about my phone. We got some dirty looks from the other travellers on the bus - apparently nobody laughs in a pre-dawn airport. Some folks just don’t appreciate irony.

Hours blended together and the passage of minutes became meaningless. For the next three days, we drifted on the tides of kung fu in a strange new world where training, learning, working together, laughing, more training, basically everything … is more important than such mundane details as sleep or the concept of time.

Even the weather seemed uncommitted to any particularly rigid schedule. The wind that howled in over the Atlantic brought everything from glorious sunshine to angry slate-colored clouds and swirls of this mysterious white substance that I would later be assured was, in fact, snow. In April. In a place with “Beach” in its name.

Luckily, the extended kung fu family that gathered for the workshop all banded together to get done whatever needed doing. We fell into an easy rhythm of training, working together, gathering groceries and securing lodging and, yes, making an urgent run to Target for some extra layers of clothes for those of us (me) who were too Texas to handle the weather (I am a delicate flower).

And … look, I don’t like many people. I’m a curmudgeonly sort by nature, though mostly it’s bluster to cover introversion and a sometimes-crippling shyness, so meeting new folks stresses me out and makes me cranky. But there was something about this place, something about all of these women coming together from all over the country, that bypassed my attitude problems completely. We were all there with the same goal in mind: to train, and train hard. To listen and learn and sweat and pass out and get up to do it all over again without even once complaining because we had all moved our own personal mountains to be there.

It’s impossible not to like people under those circumstances. Or, at least, it was for me.

The family that plays forms together, spends time together without talking to each other, is totally my kind of family.

This was a workshop just for women - the only menfolk on that beach were Sigung Moy Tung and his baby boy (I heard that a few of Sigung’s male students were around, helping from behind the scenes like magical elves to keep things flowing smoothly, but I never saw them) - so the entire weekend had its own unique energy. Maybe it’s the same with any all-ladies athletic type thing. Maybe any large group of combat-trained women would gather together this harmoniously. I wouldn’t know; I avoid the hell out of crowds and my most athletic pursuits in the past couple of decades have been marathons of the Doctor Who variety.

What I do know … what I learned from my brain all the way down to my bones over the course of the weekend … is that the women of this Ving Tsun Kung Fu family are a force to be reckoned with.

It's not every day you get to watch a very nice lady put her fist through your Simo's chest.

Ving Tsun women are strong and they know it. But not once in the hours upon hours of training did I encounter so much as a flicker of competitiveness. We tested each other, pushed each other’s limits, but it was never about winning or proving who was stronger. The only person I felt the need to compete with was myself, and I kicked my carcass all over that floor. So yeah, I won, but I also lost. Which is what learning feels like.

Ving Tsun women can fuss and laugh and holler and sing as much as they like, each to her own desires, but when it comes down to violence we all fall silent. Focused. For hours on end, the only sounds in a room full of women was the shuffling of kung fu slippers across slate floors, the rustling of cloth, and the occasional dull thump of impact.

In those long stretches of kinetic silence, I found myself imagining how eerie it would be for an attacker to find themselves dealing with a victim who, instead of screaming or flailing, steps forward with all the quiet inevitable aggression of gravity and every intention to, as Sigung put it, “do everything you can to make them swallow blood”.

Ving Tsun women can drive through five hours of blizzard, in the middle of the night, in solid flurries of silver-dollar-sized snowflakes, at 20 mph in darkest rural Ohio to get to a VT workshop. Some of the ladies at this workshop did exactly that, and stepped right into training the moment they arrived. Luggage still in the car, a long night’s horrible road behind them, and they were doing forms with the rest of us.

Because to a Ving Tsun student fatigue is not an obstacle, it’s a training tool. The more exhausted the muscles, the more solid the structure had to be. All of us survived for days on single-digit hours of sleep grabbed in bits and pieces on whatever horizontal surface happened to be available. We trained until we were tired and then we kept training until tired was a distant unlamented memory.

When midnight rolled around on the last night, Simo, the other Texas ladies, and I looked at the handful of hours stretching between us and when our flight was scheduled to leave and had a decision to make. We could either take a tiny, unsatisfying nap followed by the epic struggle to be awake enough to travel, OR … we could just keep training through the night until it was time to leave. So we trained. Because duh.

A single day in the life of this workshop consisted of …

... absorbing every ounce of education from Sigung Moy Tung that we could,

... dozens of siu nim tao played in slow, deliberate unison like some kind of epic performance poetry,

... chasing giggling babies,

... hours of clashing in rows of chi sao like the world’s quietest mosh pit,

... throwing literally thousands of punches,

... cooking vats of pasta and from-scratch marinara sauce, chopping piles of fresh salad, enough to feed the entire small ravenous army of us,

... taking brutal powerwalks on a beach relentlessly sandblasted with frigid gale-force winds,

... comparing notes on our training experiences,

... laughing together,

... clocking enough hours of touching hands to equal at least month of regular training,

... taking care of each other so that we can wollop the breath out of each other all over again,

... and maybe a nap. Maybe.

The women of this Ving Tsun Kung Fu family are a mighty tribe. And I’m honored to be counted as one of them.

Been there, done that, proudly wear the t-shirt.

A brief word about training with Grandmaster Moy Tung:

There is nothing else like it. Because there is no one else like Sigung Moy Tung. Over the course of this weekend, I started to understand why the term is “martial artist”. Because that level of interpretation, of dedicating one’s life fully to the study, of never losing the joy of discovering new applications of technique, of becoming so brimming-over full of knowledge that it has to spill over and be shared with students who will know its value … that is Art.

This workshop was an immersive experience. Jump into the kung fu pool and start swimming. Lessons were everywhere, in everything we did, around every corner. That’s why we only slept when we absolutely had to - when those lessons are being taught by Grandmaster Moy Tung, you really don’t want to be caught napping. You’ll miss something awesome.

Week 4: The Worst Of Times, The Best Of Times

{Prologue, Week 1, Week 2, Week 3}

Folks warned me there’d be ups and downs with this training. I just didn’t realize both could happen in the same week. Silly me.

Tuesday night started simply enough. We warmed up with Siu Nim Tao, and then Simo offered us the option of starting with conditioning or drills. I appreciate conditioning, but I like drills. See the difference? Lemme ‘splain.

Conditioning is … It’s a lot of things. I’m not about to try and explain the theory and spirit of it better than much smarter people than I already have. The long and short of it is that I’m pushing my body to the point of discomfort, and then a little farther. Every time I do, that point gets reset to that new distance and I can measure my body’s growing strength in how long it takes me to get there. Incredibly valuable work, if not very exciting.

Drills are a different beast. Not just the motions, but the response to those motions, and the response to that response. If conditioning is a monologue, drills are a conversation. Two people dancing to the music of skin and breath while calculating the endlessly mutable equations of muscle and bone around the infinite variables of physics and human thought. Or, ya know … trying to hit each other. Depends how poetic you’re feeling. I tend to fly a bit fancy in my own head about it (as you might have noticed).

So on Tuesday, when I was presented with the choice of which aspect of training to start with, I chose conditioning. Having the brain candy of drills to look forward to would, I figured, help the conditioning go by faster. Spoonful of sugar and all that jazz.

And you know what? I rocked that conditioning. The body that had spent half the day nursing a migraine had no complaints about moving through the exercises Simo presented. I sailed past points that had once been full of breathless near-agony, and actually caught myself grinning when my legs finally, long after I thought they should have, began to shake just a little.

I was mighty. The superhero version of myself. I could arm wrestle bears and hurl exploding cupcake grenades at evildoers. Obviously. Pondering how many busloads of orphaned kittens I could save with my newfound powers, I sat down for a quick break to rest and rehydrate.

Break done, I measured off with my partner for cross-arm drills. Imagine my bewilderment as every word of Simo’s instructions skittered off the surface of my mind like oil across a hot skillet. There and gone, nothing sticking or sinking in. With a buzzing behind my eyes, I watched my partner move through the drill a few times and hoped I’d catch on. Alas. The buzz turned into deafening static on the line of communication between my brain and my body. Signals were being sent out, but the reception was garbled. Lacking any clear orders from my brain, my arms became sluggish noodles, delivering my hands to their positions long seconds after my partner’s fists arrived.

The fog had rolled in. The dreaded brain fog.

Lupus Fog is a real thing. You can tell, because it has a page on WebMD. When I get tired, or the lupus kicks itself into high gear, I find it hard to think around the fuzz inside my skull. Memories disappear for a little while. I lose the words for things and the will to find them as my vocabulary dissolves and my attention span shrinks to microscopic levels. It’s like being stuck in that moment when you’re just about to nod off to sleep. There’s a short list of things you can do with a brain in that state, and Kung Fu isn’t on it.

The fog is frustrating under any circumstances, but when it happens while I’m trying to learn a new thing? When I should totally have seen it coming, what with the migraine and the conditioning-induced fatigue, but either didn’t see it or didn’t want to see it? When my goals for the night rapidly dwindle from the long, lovely conversation of drills to simply getting the damn sequence right once, just one time, before I call it a night? That took me so far beyond frustrated that I would’ve chewed nails and spit bullets if I could’ve focused on my teeth for more than two seconds.

It felt like I was saying "I won't do this because it's too hard", which is something that I'd sooner walk on my own lips than say. But I didn't exactly have a choice.

Simo and the other student were fantastic, very empathetic and totally willing and able to work with my sudden onset of special needs, but ultimately I had to concede defeat. Splash some water on my angry face and quietly play through Siu Nim Tao until I calmed down. The drive home involved a lot of really loud, melodramatic music.

The next day dawned on a clear, but discouraged mind. I made coffee and did the grumpiest Siu Nim Tao ever. But I did it, so that’s something. Eventually, I remembered that there were people I could talk to about this mess. Sifu and Simo, other students. Plenty of folks had reminded me, repeatedly, that they were available to help out. One student at the school, in particular, had also started his training with a disability, and he had said I could ping him if I ever needed to.

Now, look ... I’m not normally one to reach out for help or commiseration. People say things like “if you need anything, call me” all the time, and they don’t really mean it. It’s just the Nice Thing to say. Besides, it’s been the habit of a lifetime to stew in my own moody juices until I either work through the mess or decide it’s not worth my time any more and just move on. But this wasn’t something I was going to get over on my own. And it seems to me that maybe Kung Fu isn’t made for loners. There’s a community that builds itself around the study, the teaching and the learning and the work that goes into it. People who have been, if not precisely where I am, then at least very near it.

So I took a deep breath, got over myself, and messaged my fellow student:

Bless his socks, he got it. Mine was not a unique incomprehensible snowflake of an issue. Someone else had gone through something similar, survived it, thrived on it, and was happy to help me do the same. I’m starting to get the idea that, in this Kung Fu life thing that I’m still trying to figure out, when someone offers to help you it’s not an empty courtesy. They actually want to help. They have energy and knowledge and muscle on reserve for you, should you ever ask.

So we talked, and I felt better. I walked into the Friday morning class expecting no more of myself than to get through the basic forms and drills without falling apart. Setting the bar low makes it easy to step over, thus scoring myself a quick victory to help rebuild what discouragement had knocked down. It’s pretty standard op when you’re used to nursing yourself through rough spots. It also turned out to be pretty unnecessary.

I don’t want to wax fangirly, here, but that class was … it was fantastic. Somewhere in the quiet intensity of a room full of people working very hard, an environment both soothing and invigorating, through the calm encouragement of instructor and friends, I found the superhero me that I’d left behind on Tuesday. I wasn’t leaping tall buildings in a single bound, but I was damn sure throwing and pak’ing hundreds more punches than I’d thought possible, testing my balance in new and exciting ways, and finally starting to grok the concept of relaxed energy.

In the middle of conditioning, with sweat soaking my bandana and one foot in the air, I realized … If I have to power through the Crucible Of Teeth-Gnashing Frustration every now and then, I'm cool with it. Because now I know that there is support within the school for me and my crazy princess disease, and that for every day of defeat there will be at least one day of triumph. Maybe more, if I play my forms right.

The drive home from that class may or may not have involved Uptown Funk on repeat and car-dancing all the way to Round Rock. No regrets. Everyone should have a chance to feel that awesome.

Roadtrips & Kung Fu Life

"The Journey is the Reward."  

~ Chinese Proverb

by
Mary Ceallaigh
and Sifu Vyvial

The Chinese New Year of the Snake arrived on February 10^th, and, being a Snake person myself, I welcomed this New Year feeling with an especially happy anticipation about the Tao’s unfolding. And it wasn’t long before I found myself travelling for Kung Fu,  to two different cities within one month...

My Sifu regularly travels to visit Moy Tung Kung Fu Academy Houston, a 3-hour drive away, and this time he was joined by Simo and a couple other of us along for the ride on a journey that turned out to be a continuous training – in balance, coordination, timing, sensitivity, and relaxation – kept intact with respect. From the dark winter morning gathering at the school, to attending the Saturday morning Houston class led by Sifu & Dai Sihing Nic, we trained. From some fun side-errands in Houston’s Little India, and an evening return and lingering wrap up conversations in the school office with my Simo, we trained, trained, trained.


This sort of togetherness is called “Kung Fu Life” in Ving Tsun and something Grandmaster Moy Yat emphasized often. It's the process of putting ourselves in situations where we have to directly face moment-to-moment reality through relationship, and respond with our martial attributes. Doing this, we experience the consequences of our actions immediately, and in this way, our physical practices and Kung Fu Life go hand-in-hand. This is why it is said that making the many sacrifices involved to travel for immersion-style training & socializing can exponentially increase your Kung Fu development, as each hour spent together with practice in mind is an hour of great potency. Traditional practitioners of mind-body arts throughout Asia took regular journeys and retreats very seriously, as a way to deepen their practice.


Within days of the Houston trip, I was in my Sifu’s office and he said “You should go to Richmond - you really should! The school can take a van, we’ll take turns driving, it’ll be fun!” Knowing that it was a good date for me to travel, my natural response spontaneously arose without thought – and it was a question: “Is Simo going?” My innate intelligence understood that, as one of the few females in the school, I needed to travel with my Simo, who is not only the most skilled Ving Tsun female presently training in Austin, but also the other half of Sifu. I knew if my Simo was going I would go – and that everything would align in order for me to do so, which it did.


Snakes of the Wood element type of people rarely rely on others, and I wouldn’t normally consider a continuous drive group road trip experience any fun, having done plenty of trekking in my 20s...  And though I have a stable group of close friends that I feel connected to and I love each of these people quite deeply, I am also easily content with solitude!  So, even though 24 hours on the road encapsulated in a jiggling van with 6 other people and a variety of strange pit stop locations isn't my usual thing, I knew it would be wonderful test of martial attributes. I also knew that the Richmond workshops would be energizing and amazing, due to some previous experiences with training transcendence...


Sifu-Simo's presence helped steer our little crew of committed students owards successful improvisation with this trip adventure. Our rental van was a new luxury Chrysler, replete with movie screens, adjustable seats, and fancy seat lighting & air streams - crazy like a jet airplane:

Sifu sat next to the driver, kept drivers awake all night, served up music requests, and helped keep us aware of our progress.

 

And by the 16^th hour on such a journey, when chronological time no longer makes any sense, it was just the power of intention and community spirit that carried us to the final goal.  And after after about 24 hours on the road, we arrived at the tail-end of Richmond West school's Friday night class.  Sifu wanted us to attend, even though we were very sleep-deprived, disheveled, and unshowered....  While normally in such circumstances I would just head straight to hot water and a bed, my Sifu-Simo were enthusiastic so I kept up, understanding that we were in Kung Fu Land with precious people. 

  

After the class, when everything started to wind down, and I was relishing the thought of crashing at the hotel, I learned that we were headed to a diner for a late night snack of champions (of course)!  My stomach wasn’t growly, so I ordered just a cup of tea, and feeling the heavy, warm diner mug in my hand instantly re-ignited the fires of gratitude and Wu Wei (harmony) in my heart there at the table, in Richmond, Virginia. Sitting across from me was Dai Sihing Neil, and when his plate of food arrived he shared his corncake with me. I was especially touched by this simple act in the wee hours of the morning after what seemed like a really long journey, and it tasted very, very good.


A little later, when our smaller group of Austin students arrived at our hotel at 1am, Sihing Rubin patiently parked our van and got us checked in, paying attention to a multitude of details, just like he had done with all the groundwork before we left Austin and all the fueling on the road. As we walked/stumbled the downtown hotel's hallways in a place I’d never been before (a city formerly known for its very dangerous circumstances), I noticed I felt safe, and that was a remarkable thing as the only female in a small group of men in a city I’d never been in before.


Our two days of training at Sigung’s nearby Richmond school began the next morning. More experienced students who were simultaneously my nephews served as my Sidais, and again, gratitude swelled in me, as they offered their unique structures for me to learn with. The energy of 40 people training together with shared commitment is an awesome thing, both indoors and outdoors under the brilliant Spring light and fresh cool air. Training outside the vacuum of our Austin school was super refreshing, as each new training partner provided a whole new universe to train with. 

Later at the evening banquet event, which was also Sigung’s birthday, there was the sweetest jazzy music, along with food, cake, chitchat, and group photos. 

Eventually Sigungmo & baby Giovanna departed with the senior ladies accompanying their trip home – and Sigung dimissed all other locals. It was then that I realized I was again the only female, this time in a room of a few dozen men, as they started to move tables around and began to train.   I soon realized I also felt protected by the presence of many high caliber, noble warriors - as well as the reliable sign of my own relaxation.


Sigung, seated in his observation post compound near a handful of newer students practicing Luk Sao, had warned me to be careful when he asked me to go around the room filming during the Chi Sau practice - where things change fast and bodies can fly!  As the minutes passed, it began to dawn on me that I was getting to see senior Kung Fu master killers in motion, all of them with at least 10 years of training (and some of them with over 20) and it was so good that it wasn't televised!!! This high-level training ground was the very same dimension inhabited by the ancient Taoist masters - except that we were in the American Northeast. Serious force was being harnessed and let loose in a bar-room brawl without much of a bar, the room permeated with the sounds of bodies crashing on tables and banging on walls, with just enough groundrules to sustain Kung Fu. It wasn't until someone got thrown into a wall and a huge oil painting in a wood frame knocked down to the floor, that I started to know that we were in an alternate dimension, really...


Meanwhile, I was intent on good filming technique and fulfilling my duty - even though one of the bodies that happened to painlessly encounter a wall was mine at one point.  It was really only afterwards that the true reality hit me: my Sifu and Dai Sihings and all the other Chi Sau players were allowing their Kung Fu to flow in ways few people ever get a chance to see, and the energy of the room was Life Force itself. In other words, it was Beautiful Springtime City, and we could have been in some high mountain meadow village.  I was feeling a relaxed trust in the exciting scene - as well as a serious amount of loving nonattachment as I saw dear ones risking bodily harm.  My Sifu was successfully knocking bigger bodies than him into the air, and younger men were surprising older men, and nothing was as it seemed. I was a very different person witnessing this than many years before when I started to cry at an Irish boxing match!!!


Eventually Sigung announced the wrap up and Chi Sau came to a close. I just sat there, blinking.  It had only been maybe an hour of Chi Sau, but Time had definitely stopped. 

The next morning was Sunday,  and Sibak really helped us get more training in by opening the school early just for us.  This was at Sifu’s request of course, because Sifu wanted us to get in as much training as possible in between riding in the van on the road!


Then later the Simos and all the female students were invited to join Sigungmo’s women’s training workshop at the historic Byrd Park carillon, where we practiced 10 Siu Nim Taos in a row, in glorious Spring air. A hawk flew over us many times during this, catching the light like kung fu, and casting huge moving shadows of wings across the pavilion. Sigungmo practiced the highly advanced Babywearing Chum Kiu, and many of us trained Toi Ma on the corridors of the stone tiles. When Dai Sihing Neil, and Sihing Rubin arrived to collect Simo and me so we could join the Austin departure, they took some photos of us, the largest Ving Tsun female group in modern times.


As our Austin group reconvened, Sifu helped us focus on a timeline despite us feeling like we could stay for days. We said our goodbyes at the school, receiving many compassionate wishes for a safe journey in our famous 24 HOUR VAN RIDE to come…. We stopped at the house and Sifu-Simo had a goodbye visit with Sigung, and then we were off, headed to North Carolina. Later, driving through the night’s hills and tree-lined highways, Sifu DJ-d some great tunes and indulged my request for Cibo Matto, even though it made him sleepy. The trip home seemed a lot faster, due to our supercharged SNT energy and enhanced Kung Fu. We drove through a rainstorm in Louisiana, listened to lots of Clifton Chenier, and arrived back in Austin in time for Monday evening’s class.  


This is just one angle of our epic adventure - as a lot more happened as those who were there well know. Personally I have experienced this journey's positive impact on my training life - it has made a regular weeknight class shimmer and fly by quickly - Life is even more alive.  My internal Kung Fu had a huge growth spurt through this experience, and body & mind have opened to whole new foundations.  I love my training even more.  How can this be?  You have to figure that out for yourself, just like the rest of Kung Fu.

About Conditioning... Part II

by Sifu Vyvial

and Mary Ceallaigh

If you have been challenging yourself through regular training and endurance conditioning, you are probably noticing that you are building mental toughness that is helping you in all areas of your life.  As for the physicality of conditioning, your fighter's fitness development is reverberating after class through a variety of bodily sensations and brain states.  Let's explore this in a little more detail.

SENSATIONS & DELAYED SORENESS

Tough conditioning in Ving Tsun is diverse, and it may mean many minutes of non-stop punching, standing in Jin Ma (wide legged standing squat) intensively, or circuit training resistance movements that mimic the non-sedentary lifestyles of ancient human movement.   Through training in the uncomfortable zone (involving extreme discomfort but not sharp pain), this will, over time, actually rewire your neural circuitry and increase your energy levels and coping abilities. The sensation of pain does not necessarily mean injury, but if you push too hard through sharp pain you will be setting up for injury, so practicing self-compassion means knowing your limits.  Acute or sharp pain should never be ignored, and activity should be ceased if that occurs.  In other words, muscle soreness should make you deeply ache, not gasp in pain.

And then the next day when you feel like you've been pummeled by a yeti, or that your knees are partially disabled, you have to WILL yourself to move around and practice again.  That, too, is conditioning, the kind that also builds mental toughness. Just a few hours after finishing new conditioning challenges a student will start to feel a stiffness come over them which begins with a slight twinge of discomfort, often located in the largest muscles of the body. As time rolls on, the soreness increases to true discomfort.  And this reminder of your conditioning has an official medical name:  Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (surprise!).

This type of soreness affects most individuals after a bout of rigorous exercise and includes symptoms that differ person-by-person.  Muscle soreness can cause areas that are painful to touch on the body, slight to moderate swelling, and redness.  Feelings of swelling, stiffness, and loss of strength commonly occur within 24 to 48 hours of performing rigorous exercise, according to the University of New Mexico Department of Exercise Science.  

If this is happening to you, you are not alone - you are yet another warrior in training, joining your classmates and countless others since ancient times who have persevered in training the mind to connect to the body through plunging the depths of self and changing phenomena.   If you are training with your whole self, you are finding yourself challenged to go beyond just the pleasant and entertaining zones of training and showing up to the unpleasant and uncomfortable as well.  The more you do this, the more you strengthen your foundation as a responsive rather than reactive warrior.   

ACTIVE RECOVERY IS THE BEST REMEDY

The intention of Ving Tsun training is pure strength and dynamic mobility.  Post-conditioning muscle soreness sensations are often part of the process, and are temporary and tolerable with good self-care along with continued mindful movement to support circulation.  

Muscle soreness during and after conditioning exercises is unavoidable for beginners at any new exercise. Since we need to stress our muscles to increase strength capacity, some soreness simply happens because we're exercising. In Ving Tsun, the severity of the soreness is lessened with the good circulation and mind-body strength of practicing Siu Nim Tao before and after the conditioning as an active recovery practice.  In addition, we discover a new realm of positive self-discipline, that of choosing "active recovery" rather than zombie-like lounging and negative thinking.

By far, the best post-workout focus is active recovery, where we continue training, or practice movements that bring blood and circulation to the areas that are aching and reverberating.    Blood circulation is the best remedy, and active recovery will give you this without any side effects.  This may be the last thing you feel like doing, but it can clear the clouds and make a huge difference in your recovery time and general attitude.  

Some of the best physical training exercises to complement your Kung Fu training are the basic squat, the deadlift, and power clean.  Using many tools, such as a barbell, kettlebell, heavy balls, sandbags, a toddler, etc.   The movement matters, not the tool.  These exercises can be done in just a few minutes, do them with deep nostril breathing.  If done right, they train your whole body.  

If your knees are stiff, getting into a squat may seem the last thing the knees might be able to do - and if your shoulder blades feel fiery or your arm joints are aching, lifting weight with them may not seem very enticing... but the body actually appreciates this kind of complementary exercise.  Discovering the harmony created by it is pretty wonderful too.

ADDITIONAL SELF-CARE MEASURES

The natural health tradition has many helpful additional measures, such as the principle of good hydration through it all.  Hydration is essential for a strong physiology, and includes pure water (spring or filtered is even better) as well as electrolyte solutions.  Though commercial electrolyte drinks are easy to buy, many of them have inferior ingredients and even unhealthy ones.  Plain coconut water is electrolytic, and very east to assimilate (try Zico, which is super-fresh tasting, and not canned).  Much more economically, you can make your own electrolyte drinks as a daily habit, and can pour them into your travel container to take on the road with you.  

Here are a few brew recipes:  

#1 Into one big glass put:  one lemon fresh squeezed (or 1/4 cup of Santa Cruz organic lemon juice), juice of one orange, about a teaspoon of raw honey, four shakes of sea salt.  Stir it up, and add water to fill up the glass and stir it again. 

#2 Into a big decanter or empty gallon container put:  2 cups of coconut milk (not coconut water), 1 teaspoon of sea salt, 1 teaspoon of raw honey or Stevia, 1 liter of filtered water.  Mix it up.

#3 This one is just tart:  Into a big decanter or empty gallon container put:  1/4 cup lemon juice, 1/4 cup lime juice, 1 teaspoon sea salt, 1 whole squeezed orange (or 1/2 cup of non-concentrate orange juice), 1 liter of filtered water.

#4  Another awesome electrolyte brew is made from a concentrate of 64 mineral-rich himalayan salt-saturated water, 1 teaspoon added to each cup of water in your water bottle.  Recipes for this can be found online.

Additional comfort measures:  warm water immersion to enhance relaxation (a hot foot bath is more effective than a hot shower or bath for a circulation boost), and topical ointments like Arnica gel, Chinese medicine balm, or Traumeel.  When necessary, in order to maintain your commitments when your schedule doesn't have enough flexibility for the optimal remedies, pain relievers such as white willow bark capsules or aspirin which contain salicylic acid will assist in blood circulation and inflammation reduction, and give you relief so that you can do what you have to do.  

From a Chinese medicine perspective, the salicylic acid of aspirin is much easier on the liver than acetaminophen or ibuprofin.  If you take aspirin, which gives quick & easy results, be mindful of how often you are doing so and try taking it as infrequently as you can, focusing on active recovery measures as the main course.

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

Staying in the process is the goal of our training.  Traditional Ving Tsun was about an intensive commitment of 5-7 hours a day, most days of the week, training with your sifu and sihings one way or another and living the kung fu life.  Though few of us can afford that kind of weekly time commitment, we can make the most of the precious time that we do have, and live the best kung fu life we can over the years of basic training and beyond.

For the next month, try practicing Siu Nim Tao each morning and evening in the days in between classes.  This will support your circulation, energy, and post-conditioning attitude as you navigate active recovery, self-care measures, and making healthy choices.  Superior all-levels health enhances training and is a continuous process.