Gung fu Diary

Discussion in 'Training Logs' started by Marku85, May 28, 2016.

  1. Marku85

    Marku85 Valued Member

    I'll be writing my experiences from my White Crane training here.

    so currently I have been working on my Shuang yang form, which has similarity with the movement seen from tai chi. There are 66 movements to this form and I'm perhaps half way through the form.

    We also recently worked on drills involving the shapes from this form. A turn to a left and then with a step and a punch towards my training partner and then the partner does the same back but I would then do a block involving the both hands open and in front of one another. The other variation to this drill was a grab with one hand and a wu sau shape with the other hand as a defence and then a preparation for my turn to turn , step and punch.

    One of the forms I'm most interested in learning from white crane is the sanzhan (sanchin) form. But I feel I may need to wait until I can do the basic framework of the Shuang yang form.

    I originally trained in Wong shun Leung Ving Tsun but as there is no one of that lineage up here I felt it best to start in another system and given that wing chin is likely derived from white crane it made sense to do this system over okinawan karate like goju ryu or Kempo.

    In terms of diet , I don't have a fixed one. Though I did cut back how much meat I eat now and I make a vegetable juice drink every now and then.

    For those not familiar with the form, it's rather similar to this:

    [ame]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xzUUkov1XE0[/ame]
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2016
    Monkey_Magic likes this.
  2. Pretty In Pink

    Pretty In Pink Moved on MAP 2017 Gold Award

    Welcome to the forum! Where in Scotland are you from?
     
  3. Marku85

    Marku85 Valued Member

    Thank you! , East Scotland , you?
     
  4. Pretty In Pink

    Pretty In Pink Moved on MAP 2017 Gold Award

    Edinburgh ;D
     
  5. Marku85

    Marku85 Valued Member

    2 hours of White Crane today. We warmed up with qigong exercises and went into the Shuang yang form where our instructor corrected our postures and hand positions and taught us how to breath during each movement. We did up to about half of that form and then we all practised the forms we're individually working on, in my case that is the same form mentioned above. Then we did various stretches and kicks and punches to warm up and some of us worked on take down techniques while others continued their forms , I was finally introduced to the Sanzhan form! This form is known as sanchin in Japanese systems.

    So far it's been fairly easy to take in the movements and I really look forward to practising it on my on tomorrow!
     
  6. Marku85

    Marku85 Valued Member

    2 Hours of White Crane on Tuesday. I worked further on the Sanzhan and i did alittle of my Shuang Yang Form, we did various stretching and then alot of kicking drills near the end of the session. Really loving the Sanzhan form, parts of it remind me of the movement from Wing Chun's Siu nim tao. As usual, we used Qigong for warming up in the the 1st half an hour of the class, after a hard day of work this seems to positively pay off for me.
     
  7. Marku85

    Marku85 Valued Member

    28th June:

    2 Hours of White Crane on Tuesday, further progress was made on the Sanzhan form and we also focused alot on stretching and bodyweight training this time. We started off with the usual few Qigong stretches before we started work in our forms. We also practised what i could describe as one of the moves from Sanzhan with the hands over 500 times (by my calculations), what a killer that was on the arms!
     
  8. Sandy

    Sandy Valued Member

    Hi Marku85,

    It's great to read your diary. Keep writing!

    Sandy
     
  9. Marku85

    Marku85 Valued Member

    thank you Sandy, my apologises i was ill for 2 weeks and i just haven't gotten back into my training(very bad). The next session is on the 20th where i'll be able to experience my first taste of Dog style gung fu. I'll be sure to write it up
     
  10. Marku85

    Marku85 Valued Member

    Hi All

    Due to relatives visiting at the last minute i wasn't able to do that 20th session. And now i'll be away in Greece. So i'll let you guys know how my 1st session back in class goes when i'm back :)
     
  11. Pretty In Pink

    Pretty In Pink Moved on MAP 2017 Gold Award

    Enjoy your holiday! :D
     
  12. Marku85

    Marku85 Valued Member

    Hi everyone!

    So tuesday session was predominantly focused on Qigong (Breathing, Stretching etc). I should mention that there is never any “ki/chi” talk , it is taught and used in the class as a form of meditation/light stretching and for that purpose it works very well, especially after a hard days work. Right after this warm up we then went on to practise our forms (as there are a couple of new beginners present) this is a nice way to start your journey in the martial arts. Forms are relatively basic with sufficient practise in and out of class, but the amount of information they contain are mind blowing as the months and years of practise go into them.

    So in today’s class i continued to refresh my memory on the Shuang Yang form and a little bit of my Sanzhan form, and then we ended the this 1 hour session with qigong (described as Hard qigong by a student).

    Have a good weekend all
     
  13. Marku85

    Marku85 Valued Member

    Session 15 - 9th February - my Gung fu journey

    i did a one hour class today. We did more warm ups than usual as it was a particularly cold evening. We practised one of the Shuang yang techniques on some air shields today, we made good progress getting the movement synced up to deliver the strike sigh weight behind it. We then practised a similar move with 1 hand near the face for defence and the other an open palm (tan sau- looking) against the face to destabilise the opponent.

    we then practised a form of our choosing. I focused on sanzhan. I got further than the 3 steps forward and 3 steps back.

    I'll update this post more later.
     
  14. Marku85

    Marku85 Valued Member

    Session 16 and 17

    hi folks

    for Session 16 and 17 it was the usual routine, we focused on forms (in my case, shuang yang and sanzhan) as well as pushing hand drills. I am pushing myself harder this time to do the hard style classes which has heavier workouts (Push ups etc). The instructor is now away for 3 weeks so i will primarily be training at home. i am considering taking up Karate or TKD to suppliment my training and get more hours in a classroom and its always good experience to train with other systems for that kind of exposure.
     
  15. Marku85

    Marku85 Valued Member

    Hi all just an update, life has been very very busy with me traveling for work ,a wedding to organise etc etc. But i hope to return to training very soon. I am considering to mix in some other local systems to help me put more hours into my overall training, given my limited space in my home.
     
    Travess likes this.
  16. Marku85

    Marku85 Valued Member

    Hi Everyone, i know it's been a few years but here is the last of the training i did in White Crane(Session 18,19 and 20) where i used to live, Since last year i moved from Scotland to England but i haven't gone to train anywhere yet except what i know already from Nam Yang Tiger crane / Yong Chun White crane and Wing Chun on and off over the years. I did also get a wooden dummy last year in which to train the wing chun dummy form but i'm not very far into learning the "form" for it.

    I am seriously considering a switch to another system like Goju Ryu Karate, a different branch of wing chun or perhaps travel to learn yong chun white crane in personal training, i'll keep you posted what i decide to do.

    Session 18 (2018)

    So today we started off with slow tai-chi like movement as a form of warm up and then proceeded to do some slow footwork that meant taking one foot and putting it behind us then rotating the whole body , repeating this process until we reached the other side of the room and then back again, to make things more difficult a point in the movement we had to do the body twisting motion where we got as low as possible to the ground and then bringing ourselves back up.

    We then did some grappling techniques , grabbing the wrist with the hand opposite the punch and then turning the body to have the feet parallel, with that completed we then proceeded to push our elbow into the torso or towards the head as an elbow strike. the other variation of this was to proceed to turn the body after bringing the opposite foot forward and turned at a angle so we were then able to complete a full body turn while our own shoulder was pressed against their shoulder, destabilising them. the 3rd variation done before the full rotation destablising technique was to not just do an elbow strike but also use our opposite leg to press our foot against their kneecap to further destablise the opponent.

    We then proceeded to do some forms for the remainder of the 1 hour class today. My knees were abit nackered given i have been out of training for quite awhile. But it was great to be back!.

    ---

    Session 19 / 20 Body Conditioning

    So for Session 19 of the White Crane training we did a 2 hour session of Body Conditioning.

    We started with the soft aspects and then went into the hard aspects which was about tensing up as many muscles as possible as we did Tiger and Crane movements where we ended set where we tried to breath out as hard as possible , by that I mean with us out as much air as possible. When done correctly the sound it makes is quite particular.

    After that we took a brief break we then did palm strikes to each others stomachs and then started bashing our arms against each other to condition them. This was obviously quite painful but no where as painful as when we did the same with our shins. We also did side kicks to the each leg (outside part).

    From Memory, this is a list of what we did:

    – Tiger stance wider than shoulder + breathing + tense all muscles
    – White crane shoulder length + tense every muscle in body. Breath from dan tien.
    – Crane hands twice then hands to waist open palm then strikes + comes back and clench sanzhan style.
    – Arms up and then wide / crane coming down.
    – Side kick to shins
    – Arms up and down on both sides and then two high hits and then two lower hits . Humourous bones colliding.
    – Pressing/Resisting with our hands(Wrist) + Then palm strike to stomach
    – Hit each other’s arms using 1 arm to hit each side then swap hand to repeat.
    And for Session 20 this was a workshop covering the Yong Chun White Crane San Zhan form. As mentioned for the previous session we warmed up doing Qigong movements for the first 10-15 minutes. We then proceeded to be shown each section of the form and for much of the remaining class we would repeat this form over and over and over and correct our minor errors. I have a video below of which is the form version we learnt and performed. I will update this Session 20 with more details tomorrow as i try to find the notes i took from the day.
     
    Monkey_Magic and Nachi like this.
  17. Monkey_Magic

    Monkey_Magic Well-Known Member

    Welcome back!

    It’s interesting to read about grappling techniques - are there any online or book resources that show White Crane‘s grappling?
     
  18. Marku85

    Marku85 Valued Member

    Thank you!

    I would suggest the following (though i can't provide direct links as i assume it would break the rules here)

    - Watch Kung Fu Quest 2 , Episode 5 (White Crane Boxing), this can be purchased online i can't recall where though.

    - Yong Chun White Crane Kung Fu by Martin Watts (His new edition just came out with updated revisions, this is the best one to dig deeper into the art, it covers aspects of the grappling with photos), i can PM you the site if you can't find it.

    - Search for Nam Yang White Crane Global Family website , it's a brand new online training website, though it's usuefulness is dependent if you have prior experience in such a system, since this is what i started off learning (later my teacher switched to Yong Chun White Crane), it's alittle too focused on chi/ki and chi-gong for me personally(My original background is WSL Wing Chun which doesn't believe in such things), but i found the exercises/movements to be really good for me, at one point i was having regular knee issues and it went away with doing these types of light stretches/exercises.

    - Search White Crane Sanzhan , the most relevant form to White Crane and many other systems, in particular you should watch the youtube videos by Karate Nerd and Monley Steals Peach for such systems and demonstrations. Youtuber Percherin72 has various forms from the Yong Chun White Crane lineage you can check out too.

    Good luck!
     
    Monkey_Magic likes this.
  19. Marku85

    Marku85 Valued Member

    Solo Training recently..

    Today and yesterday i focused on my sanzhan form practise (Yong Chun Variant) and the regular practise of the biu ji strikes , i try to bring my arms back as far as possible and thrust them forward as fast as possible with the right intensity, it seems to be making a difference. I did also take a recent crack at the Nam Yang Shuang Yang form agin (Since i only ever learnt about 1/5 of the form).

    More to follow!
     
  20. Marku85

    Marku85 Valued Member

    Wow nearly a year ago now since my last training post.

    So given the Pandemic i haven't been able to train with anyone , but I've intermittently been training the forms that i am able to recall from the past. I have even experimented with the basic karate form from Shotodan.

    In terms of forms i know from being taught, this includes Siu Nim Tao, 1/4 of the Sun Frost form (From Nam Yang White Crane) and Sanzhan (Yong Chun White Crane version)

    More recently i've been researching about Xing Yi and found a teacher or two to try to learn the system.
     
    axelb likes this.

Share This Page