June 3rd, 2001 Sunday Inside: 30 half wtsw pushups, 690 quarter situps, 30 half wtsw pushups, sit stretching. Outside: 300 step walk, 1750 step jog, 300 step walk, 10x rotational limbering, Left and right Beijing short form, right Yang long form, newly learned pre-Wu style exercises,left Yang Straight Sword, 400 step walk. Workouts have been a bit spotty this week, but when I can, I've found that both my jogging stamina is steadily improving, and that my body weight is gently falling (presumably due to increased exercise, since my diet has not significantly changed). Later this evening, I went for a fast, long roller-blade trip up and down the bay Coast, from Coyote Point park to the North, to within about 500 yards of the San Mateo Bridge. I seem to be catching my stride with this blading, and maneuverability & stability are picking up, such that I can coast with one knee held up for almost 50 - 75 feet, and I can switch around (turning left) to skating backward, and then forward again, without falling flat on my face. :) I don't know if this stability is due to the unevenly worn urethane tires? I'll find out when I change to the new tires (Labeda "trick core" 76 mm).
June 2nd, 2001 Saturday Inside: Uh...yeah, I slept in.
June 1st, 2001 Friday Inside: 20 half ntsw pushups, 20 half wtsw pushups, 690 quarter situps, 30 half wtsw pushups, sit stretching.
May 31st, 2001 Thursday Inside: 20 half ntsw pushups, 20 half wtsw pushups, 690 quarter situps, 30 half wtsw pushups, sit stretching.
May 30th, 2001 Wednesday Workout? Are you crazy? After the hectic weekend on the right coast, I was lucky to get up for work. :)
May 29th, 2001 Tuesday Once again I picked up Mr. Tolbert for an early morning workout. We went to Frick park, (behind Frick's mansion, Clayton) which has been our summer workout home for about six years. After talking for awhile about old times over our mutual coffee vice, we worked on the Wu exercises reviewed the previous day, and Mr. Tolbert had me work through the two TCC sword forms that he has taught me. I have not had swords with me in California, so this re-use of the swords was both exhilirating and, well, new. :)
May 27th, 2001 Sunday I met up with my teacher, Mr. Larry Tolbert, in Pittsburgh. After picking him up at his home, I drove to the two usual spots for class. The first was the sunshine location...and was rained out...and the other was closed for Memorial Day. So, we waited for another student to show up, and then made arrangements to meet at the studio of a local sculptor who has been studying Wu style Tai Chi...and with whom Mr. Tolbert had been learning some Wu exercises. Upon arriving at the studio, we were given the grand tour (quite the nifty place: (http://www.simonsculpture.com), and then finally cleared some chairs to the corners of the room so that we could learn some of these Wu warm up exercises. After the rather enlightening workout, Mr. Tolbert and Mr. Simon followed me to my home so that they could help me eradicate...er...tend to my bamboo garden. Mr. Simon had some nifty places to put bamboo...and I had lots of bamboo that was in need of a new home. So, we spent several hours digging, and successfully sent Mr. Simon home with 8 - 12 bundles of sprouting bamboo culms (two species in the Phillostachys family).
May 26th, 2001 Saturday Oops...in airports & airplanes from 10:30 pm last night until 1:30 pm this afternoon, so no exercise at all (and precious little sleep!). Quote for today, from Waysun Liao's "Tai Chi Classics", p. 114, "The growth of your internal power is a gradual process, requiring long periods of exercise, just as the process of refining metal into the purest metal requires constant heat and proper treatment."
May 25th, 2001 Friday Inside: 20 half ntsw pushups, 20 half wtsw pushups, 690 quarter situps, 30 half wtsw pushups, sit stretching. Outside: 300 step walk, 1550 step jog, 2 minute rest, 350 step jog, 10x rotational limbering, 1st two sections of yang long form, 350 step walk.
May 24th, 2001 Thursday Inside: 20 half wtsw pushups, 690 quarter situps, 30 half wtsw pushups, sit stretching, 30x windmill. Outside: 350 step walk, 1600 step jog, 150 step walk, 10x Windmill, 10x rotational limbering, L & R Beijing short form, 1x yang long form, 350 step walk.
May 23rd, 2001 Wednesday Inside only: 30 half wtsw pushups, 690 quarter situps, 30 half wtsw pushups, 30x windmills, sit stretching, 30 half wtsw pushups.
May 22nd, 2001 Tuesday (I seem to have two 5/22's recorded in my Palm III...) Inside: 20 half wtsw pushups, 690 quarter situps, 30 half wtsw pushups, sit stretching, 30x windmill. Outside: 360 step walk, 1200 step jog, 200 step walk, 30x Windmill, 10x rotational limbering, Left Beijing short form, 350 step walk.
May 22nd, 2001 Tuesday Inside: 20 half wtsw pushups, 600 quarter situps, 35 half wtsw pushups, sit stretching. Outside: 350 step walk, 1600 step jog, 150 step walk, 10x Windmill, 10x rotational limbering, Left and right Beijing short form, 1x Yang long form, 350 step walk.
May 21st, 2001 Monday Inside: 40 half wtsw pushups...and then preparing for carpet cleaning, so no actual workout. But, thoughts for the day: Do you just do the form "on the opposite side" because you can, or is there a training-related benefit? There are two significant aspects: the first is the seemingly obvious need to train your mind and body to work equally well on both sides, all four directions and four angles; the second is the realization that you find more readily areas of the form that need work, but that you glide right over on the overly-familiar original side of the form. I found, on 5/20/01, that I really hadn't previously paid attention to how "Embrace the Tiger and Return it to the Mountain" needed to be done when turning to the left instead of to the right...so, I worked on just that series of postures for awhile, until I felt that the left set of postures resembled the moves in the right set. A guy sitting behind me on the morning's Caltrain commute up to SF is playing with sticks...this sounds like either a game of "pick up stix" or yarrow/bamboo twigs used in I-ching divination. I haven't thought of the use of yarrow sticks for quite a while, but I remember those I-Ching sessions with my teacher Larry to be very important...teaching the intertwined lessons of patience, contemplation & general I-Ching usage/interpretation.
May 20th, 2001 Sunday Inside: 20 half wtsw pushups, 600 quarter situps, 20 half wtsw pushups, sit stretching. Outside: 300 step walk, 1550 step jog, 300 step walk, 10x rotational limbering, 3x10x Windmill, Left and right Beijing short form, standing meditation, right Yang long form, sit stretching, 3x Salute to the Sun, 1x yang long form, standing meditation, sit stretching, 300 step walk. Although the 1550 step jog is not yet close to my approximation of 1760 needed for traversing a mile, the 1/2 mile markers on the trail showed me that I may have gone just over 1 mile in this jog. I think that it was the 1600 meter event that I had run in high school track....but that was no where near a qualifying mile. :)
May 19th, 2001 Saturday Inside: 30 half wtsw pushups, 600 quarter situps, 30 half wtsw pushups, sit stretching. Outside: 300 step walk, 1000 step jog, 300 step walk, 10x rotational limbering, Eight Golden Treasures, Left and right Beijing short form, sit stretching, 3x Salute to the Sun, left and right Yang long form, 300 step walk.
May 18th, 2001 Friday Inside: 70 half situps, 40 half wtsw pushups, sit stretching. Outside: 400 step walk, 1250 step jog, 10x rotational limbering, Left and right Beijing short form, right Yang long form, 300 step walk. Focus: During the jogging warmup, focus is easy to maintain because I'm concentrating on counting the number of steps that I'm putting down. I count 10 steps per on my right hand fingers and then 50 steps per on my left hand fingers. Unfortunately, I have no physical way of recording sets of 250 steps as I "fill up" the capacity of my left hand; fortunately, I haven't built up endurance enormously. :) Why, you ask, am I counting steps at all? Because as I ramp up my endurance training (which intended to supplement/augment the Tai Chi), I need a method to measure my progress. Every person's steps comprise a stride of a different length....I suspect that my strides' length may may be about 1 yard (~1 meter), so I need to slowly work up to an average of 1760 strides to roughly equate a mile in distance jogged. Then I can work incrementally up. It sure would be nice to run a 10K or two before I see 4 decades! :) Daily reading: WSJ, of course, but also CIO Mag and a special Tai Chi book - _T'ai-chi Touchstones: Yang Family Secret Transmissions_, Compiled and translated by Douglas Wile, (c)1983, Sweet Ch'i Press. An excerpt: From the Songs of the Five Steps, pp. 36-7 Song of Advance When it is time to advance, advance without hesitation. If you meet no obstacle, continue to advance. Failing to advance when the time is right, is a lost opportunity. Seizing the opportunity to advance, you will surely be the victor. Song of Central Equilibrium We are centered, stable and still as a mountain. Our ch'i sinks to the tan-t'ien and we are as if suspended from above. Our spirit is concentrated within and our outward manner perfectly composed. Receiving and issuing energy are both the work of an instant. - From Yang Family Manuscripts collected by Li Ying-ang.
May 17th, 2001 Thursday Inside: 500 quarter situps, 20 half ntsw pushups, 20 half wtsw pushups, sit stretching. Outside: 400 step walk, 1000 step jog, 10x rotational limbering, 30x & 10x windmill, Left Beijing short form, 1.75x Yang straight sword (second time through working on lowering postures & holding stances), 300 step walk.
May 16th, 2001 Wednesday Inside: 500 quarter situps, 25 full wtsw pushups, 10 half pushups, sit stretching. Outside: 350 step walk, 900 step jog, 400 step walk, 10x rotational limbering, 30x windmill, Left and right Beijing short form, right Yang long form, 350 step walk. Must be more humid here on the SF Bay, since I was moderately dripping after the jog, but profusely sweating after the short & long forms. After seeing the videos of my form, I realize that I must focus on having a lower stance throughout the form. This should become easier as I repeat the form on a daily basis...but I must be vigilant to not allow myself to lose these nuggets of growth. Areas of the form where low stance can be maintained, but are prone to bobbing: Single Whip, beginning to end; Wave Arms Like Clouds (right - middle - left - middle - right). Areas of the form where low stance is difficult to maintain: kicks, spins, White Crane, Golden Cock.
May 15th, 2001 Tuesday Inside: 500 quarter situps, 30 half wtsw pushups, 10 full pushups, sit stretching. Outside: 300 step walk, 800 step jog, 300 step walk, 10x rotational limbering, 40x windmill, left Yang long form.
May 14th, 2001 Monday Inside: 350 qrtr situps, 45 half wtsw knuckle pushups. outside: 750 step jog, 300 step walk, left & right Beijing Short Form, 10x rotational limbering, left Yang Straight Sword. Inside: 20 wtsw half pushups, 30x Windmill Arm Note: For awhile now (meaning from before I left Pittsburgh) I've been fretting about the idea that Tai Chi focuses training on leg and lower body conditioning. Except for arm and shoulder-oriented exercises such as Part the Wild Horse's Mane, Twist Step Brush Left Knee and Wave Arms Like Clouds, there is little that encourages actual continual muscular development of arms & shoulders. This is why I've added daily attention to pushups and windmills to the daily regimen. The pushups I'm doing are slightly lower impact than full body pushups (which I'm also working into my workout slowly)...which is why I always refer to them as "half pushup". It seems to me that you may get more long-term benefit from more reps of a lower impact exercise. I could be wrong. :)
May 13th, 2001 Inside: 350 qrtr situps, 40 half wtsw half situps Outside: No tai chi today since I slept in this morning (too much web- editing/surfing last night! :-) Rollerblading! First, a photoshoot. Then, I did some more of my sprint, stop and turn practice before heading out to the city streets. Heretofore, I'd not ventured out to actual city streets for blading, just the relatively easy jogging trails of the bay-front park between Coyote Point and the San Mateo bridge. This trip was to test starting and stopping capabilities on street corners, crossing busy streets, avoiding sidewalk obstacles....and testing travel time to & from Caltrain. No fatalities...but I did come close to wiping out on a long downward slope. Although I was periodically braking, I momentarily got to a speed where I felt rather wobbly...but was able to relax and bend my knees enough to regain control and slow my pace. Know the saying about having your life flash before your eyes? :)
May 12th, 2001 Inside: 100 qrtr situps, 40 half situps, 40 half wtsw half situps, sit & stretch. Outside: 500 step jog, 660 step warm down walk, 10x rotational limbering. Right long yang, left 1st section of long yang.
May 11th, 2001 Inside training today 350 quarter situps, 50 half wtsw pushups, 10x rotational limbering, 30x windmill, left and right Beijing Short form. Opponent - Along with breath coordination, which seems pretty automatic now, the thought flowed through of Larry Cowen's query about visualizing an opponent. Apparently thats big in his form of karate. Although Mr. Tolbert (link) mentions such, it is implied as one visualizes the applications of of each moving posture. The WardOff which lifts and turns the opponents advancing attack; the PullBack which neutralizes the opponents further advance; the Raise Hands or Play the Pipa that locks the opponents arm in a chin na hold. See related quote in "Advanced Yang Style TCC", YMAA, p. 21, para. 3: "develop the feeling of having an opponent in front of you".
May 10th, 2001 35 half-pushups, 35 half situps Stretched in the apartment for 15 minutes Walked to the park and walked 500 yards, turned around and jogged back to the grassy area. Then worked through the eight golden treasures for the first time in many months, and followed on with one pass through the long Yang. Very invigorating, but since I was shooting for leaving the apartment earlier than normal (by 7:45 instead of 8:00 am), I walked back to the apartment for breakfast.
Daily Reading: WSJ & ?? -
May 9th, 2001 35 half-pushups, 35 half situps, 200 quarter situps Stretched in the apartment for 15 minutes Walked to the bay side park (San Mateo, at east end of 3rd Ave.). Usually I've been jogging every morning for two weeks, but this morning I just walked down to the grassy area, stretched a little more, and worked through 2 sets of the Beijing 24 (left side, right side).
Daily Reading: WSJ & Tai Chi Chin Na, YMAA -
