Day 2: Training

Training with my 3 section staff last night proved to be just as dangerous as I talked about the day before.  As I was attempting to spin it like a bo staff, I didn't respect its power and manage it made me pay for it.  The 3rd section of the staff swung down and cracked straight across the shin.  I'm lucky though, I purchased some Dit Da Jow just a week ago and I applied it directly over the lump on my leg and rubbed it in for several minutes before going to bed.  I assumed when I woke up I was going to have a massive bruise on my shin due to the fact that a fairly large lump had already formed.  Shockingly though, the Dit Da Jow did just what it said it would do.  When I woke up I looked down at my leg and the swelling was minimal and no bruise has appeared.

I'm fairly certain there should have been a nice big bruise on my shin!

Because today is a Tuesday, I will be going back to the gym for my weight training and then after work I plan on spending a few hours in my backyard again, hopefully not hurting myself anymore.  To be honest though, I really love using hard wood weapons because when you make a mistake, you remember that mistake.  If I was training with a 3 section staff made out of rubber or some lighter material, I feel it would be much harder to learn from mistakes.  Although now that I have this Jow, I do feel like I can be a little reckless and still heal easily, but in reality I should really be more careful!

Today's main focus is stretching, power, and strength.  I've had some problems in the past with my squat, so I will be really focusing on my form today.  The problem I have is simply that I get so caught up in my head at times, telling myself all sorts of ridiculous things that it very easily impacts my workouts.  For instance: My whole life I've been told that bad knees run in my family.  Although this is true, I continuously tell myself that.  I paint this picture in my head that I have bad knees and that plays through my mind as I place the weight on my back.  Thinking like that just seems to doom me to failure and I believe is one of the reasons why I have trouble progressing my squat.  I also have had some lower back problems in the past, so when I get up to the rack I sometimes am nervous about that too.  What martial arts teaches me though is quite simple.  The more I tense up, the more I think about failure, the more I think and think and think, the more likely I am to fail.  If I get up to the weight and rather than thinking about it, I just visualize perfect form and then just go with it, I find I feel much more natural.  It's so easy to get caught up in mind games about something so simple.  If you have the same problem as me, give it a shot.  Always visualize yourself accomplishing whatever it is you are doing, you should see dramatic improvement!

One of my greatest weaknesses right now is my lack of flexibility.  I've always wanted to be able to do a split, but I've never really seriously worked on my flexibility.  If I were to attempt a split... ouch, it would not be a pretty sight!  I also have problems with my kicks.  It's difficult to kick higher then a certain point, which bothers me.  How can I solve this problem? Am I sure I'm not just genetically predisposition to never be flexible? Am I too old to start flexibility training?  I really don't think so.  I'm going to track my progress with my stretching as well as the height I can kick at and the power I can generate with my kicks on either a daily or weekly basis.  I'll make a page for it, so if you are interested in what I do and how long it takes to progress, feel free to check it out!  I haven't decided exactly how I will go about measuring my stretching progress, but I think I will go off pictures, videos, and perhaps create one of those measurement boards that I can touch my fingertips to and see the actual measurable distance.