Getting My Wushu On

  

17 September 2013
 
Dear Diary,
 
My very first wushu lesson ended six hours ago. My shoulders and upper back still let me know we have issues with each other. If I'm not sore tomorrow, I'll be surprised. Very surprised. And annoyed. Seriously. I'm one of those people who like that good post-exercise soreness that tells me I'm doing good stuff. I had stopped getting sore with my previous workout (but still seeing improvements) and I miss it. I'm sure Jared doesn't miss my comments though. "Man, my hamstrings!" "Move your elbow, child!" "Ouch...." Aman promised me soreness. And I'm inclined to believe him. He kind of knows more about this stuff than I do. Oh! And my hip joints feel like I have isolated heat packs sitting on them. Such a weird feeling.


Okay, so, let's talk Aman. I showed my sister a picture and she said "oh my gosh, he fits perfectly!" What she means is... he's not a Li. He's a Ren and Kishan. You know, the control, the confidence, well defined arm and shoulder muscles... Views like that make the world a happier place. And, really, I can't move like that. I believe I wrote the words "powerful" and "explosive" before. Other commonly heard words were "sharp" and "snap". I'm more flowy and slow. Let me make sure I have this right because if I go quicker, I feel too much out of control. I'm sure that will change. I hope that will change. My muscles will learn.


Since this was my first lesson, I arrived at 30 minutes early to get my daughter situated in the gym's child center. Then I headed up the stairs to meet up with Aman. We started with a warm up. I'll usually do warm up on my own but having never done whatever he wants me to do, we started early today. Treadmill jog for, I don't know, four minutes? Then the lunges and stretches.


No, wait. Let's remember it all. I have to do it again.


Walking lunges: You take a big step into a lunge stretch. All the way across the room, alternating legs.
Backwards walking lunges: Take the walking lunges but backwards. It takes a lot of balance to go backwards!
8 point something or another: Start standing. 1-crouch down, hands by feet. 2-jump out to plank position. 3-do a push up. 4-finish your one pushup. 5-jump your feet out wide (really wide, no, get your feet out wider). 6-jump your feet back together. 7-jump your feet up by hands. 8-stand up. Keep a steady count throughout. Let someone else count how many you should do (I did more than 5, that's all I remember.)
Jump squats (except Aman called them something else): Start feet together. Jump feet apart and sink into a squat. Come up and jump feet together and jump feet apart again to sink into another squat. Repeat until someone tells you to stop. (I'm terrible at counting.)
Regular squats: hands behind head, keeping torso upright as much as possible.
Circle arms big, forwards and backwards.
Then he checked my coordination and one arm went forwards while the other went backwards. Then switch. I have good coordination.
Circle hips around. Both ways.
Circle knees around. Both ways. Don't hold onto your knees. Place your hands a few inches above your knees.
 
Drink some water.
I'm a little tired just writing all that!


So, I am done the warm up and now it's time to move onto arm work. Everything was segmented out which is making it easier to remember everything we did. I put all the information about warm ups into a mental box, tied it with a mental ribbon (pink, my daughter would insist), and put it into a mental cubby hole. Then I opened another box for the arm section.


Most of the time when you see people punch, it is a short punch. Their torso stays fairly center and they jab out at their target. In Wushu, you throw a long punch. You turn from your hips. You also have to get used to the beginning pose. I'm not sure it's proper name. But it's the beginning of really good posture. Shoulders down and back. Fists at your waist (waist, not hips). Shoulders back. Thumbs across the first two knuckles (thumb side facing up). Shoulders back. Chest out. Shoulders back. And down. Feet together. Check your shoulders again.... And don't you dare think you're tired of that yet. Because the mantra of the hour is "shoulders down" or "shoulders back". Or just "shoulders...."



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So you're in your beginning pose and it's time to punch. A front long punch. Your fist comes out in front of you, arm extended, torso turning to make one long, elegant, powerful looking weapon of fist. But with your shoulders down and back. You keep your fist with the thumb up until the very end, when you snap your fist into the punch with the thumb side down, the first two knuckles facing directly straight into your target (which happens to be air but... imagine). Aman related it to the crack of a whip. There is more power with a snap than without. Also, if your knuckles are facing any other orientation, you risk breaking your wrist when you hit a target other than a ghost. Same with making sure your thumbs are in the right place (across the first two knuckles). As you return your fist to your side, you bring your other fist out, turning your torso to the other side. It is kind of... flowy. But mostly sharp and powerful. Maybe if I hear those words enough, I'll become more comfortable with the actions that go along with them. Do several of them. Don't worry about speed. Try to get the snap though.



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Next up was a side long punch. Your fist comes out to the side with that same snap at the very end. And your head looks the same way. As you bring your fist back, you snap your other fist out. Again, slow is fine. Snap is better. And check your shoulders.


I kind of need to get to bed... so very quickly... After the side punches, I learned palms to the front, the side, and overhead (flash palms). And it isn't the heel of the palm, it's the pinky finger edge of the hand. I have never considered the flexibility in my arms and wrists. Let's just say, they could use work.



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Next was a super brief "this is what a hook is". Basically, all your fingers touch the thumb and they point down to create a hook. I imagine that if my arm was detached at my shoulder, it would resemble a scythe. That's a good mental image I have given to myself now. Way to go, Suki. Please forgive me, Diary. It is much too late.
 
Then he showed me an arm flow that I can't describe right now. A flow is.. actually, I was telling Jared about my lesson and he was confused at my usage of flow. So I'm not actually sure it's called a flow in wushu. But in yoga, a flow is a series of poses. Like the sun salutation is a flow.
 
Then we started kicking. Kelsey didn't kick until her second lesson. But she did do stances in her first lesson. I did a little bit of everything. Except for jumping. So kicks with my arms out. Oh yeah. My shoulders got tired. Did I mention that your shoulders should be down and back? Front kicks, side kicks, cross kicks, and outside kicks. I'll have to talk more about them another time.
 
Then the stances. Horse stance and bow stance. Horse stance is a wide squat. Second position, if you know ballet. Speaking of ballet, during one of the kicks, Aman asked if I was a dancer. Not exactly. I have a natural talent for it but it is a raw, undeveloped talent and so I'm not very good. But I always wanted to learn more. Apparently I move in a way that made him ask. That made me happy. I'm rambling on... a sure sign of my tiredness! Oh, and I know the arms aren't "correct" but for the first day, he said anything was fine.



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Bow stance is similar to Warrior II in yoga but your hands are in fists and rest at your side. Resting is a terrible word to use then. You are so. not. resting. Stances are different from the rest because you get to hold them. *get to* No constant movement. Just holding. Aman said that the Shaolin monks would have boiling tea placed on their knees and they could drink it and stand up only when it had cooled down. My thinking is "how cool does the tea have to be?"



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The cool thing is that in lesson one, I got to see and begin to put some of these separate components together. I certainly did not have everything down well. My back heel kept coming up in bow stance (like a lunge instead of warrior ii). My shoulders need to be down and back. Thumbs on first two knuckles. Or cocked at the side if I'm in open hand. There is SO MUCH to remember. My muscles just don't know it yet. Once my muscles can do the remembering for me, it'll be exciting. But it was exciting to begin the first form. Going from horse stance to bow stance with a cross punch. It was a really good way to end the lesson.
 
If you don't count stretching as part of the end of the lesson. Haha. Because we stretched. Good hip stretches. The whole legs-straight-in-front-of-you-and-touch-your toes stretch except I can barely reach past my knees. Standing up and hanging down. And kind of like the splits. He said I'd have a mean side kick. I'm guessing that means I wasn't too terrible at that last one.


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18 September 2013
 
Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.
 
Later. Aman texted to see how my legs were feeling. Well, they are for sure sore. My inner thighs, my hamstring where it meets my glutes, and my hip joints. I have been working all day so at least I have kept them moving. But the periods when I would be sitting for a time just about killed me when I moved about and had the huge reminder that, yes, I did something new yesterday. He also said the warmth in my hip joints was because they just aren't used to moving all crazy like.
 




 
20 September 2013
 
I expect to be sore until probably Sunday. Hopefully I'll have a small break before going back in on Tuesday to be sore all over again. Today I went running. I wanted to cry for the first few minutes until my inner thighs settled into the run. Still hurt but not as much. Only made it 1.5 miles before walking. Ran a little bit more at the end... had to get over the initial pain again...
 


 
23 September 2013
 
 
Dear Diary,
 
I haven't been super sore since Saturday. Today I can still feel some sore spots only when I do my deep stretches. Yay! I get today and tomorrow sore-free! Before living back in the land of Ever Sore for another three or four days.








For your viewing pleasure, one last photo from our little photo shoot. My sister likes the brick on my house so she likes taking pictures there, but the sun was shining bright. "Stop glaring!" she said. "I'm not glaring. It's sunny! Now hurry up and take a picture!" was my reply.



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Thank you for all the wonderful words of encouragement! I'll take them with me to my lesson tomorrow to buoy my confidence!