Training to Excel

By Julius Anastasio
Julius Anastasio is a Green Belt at Wu Dao

We had our first "Tournament Meeting" this weekend. Logistics were planned, fighting divisions were confirmed, nutrition advice was given, and training strategies/goals were discussed.

Basically, our agreed goal is to practice each form 500 times between now and the tournament. For the next four weeks we'll be breaking our forms down into four parts, concentrating on a single section each week.

The only real way to really internalize a form's movements is through repetition. There's an old the adage that's made its way through many a martial arts circle: "If you practice a technique 1,000 times, you know the technique. Practice it 10,000 times, you are the technique." Three months before the DC competition last year I decided I would at least try to get to the "knowing" stage of my form, and practiced it 10 times a day every day until the tournament. My martial arts improved leaps and bounds.

At this point, with less than two months until the tournament, I realistically can't expect to complete 1,000 repetitions of both forms. However, 500 seemed like a very reasonable amount. I calculated that doing each form 12 times a day, 6 days a week would more or less get me to the 500 mark.

I got started with this routine on Sunday morning. My plan was to practice the first section of Xiao Hong Chuan (my hand form) 5 times slowly, the whole form once slowly, the first section 5 times full speed, and then the whole form once at full speed. I did the same with Zhen Shan Gun (my staff form). Total time: ~1/2 hour.

Great! This seemed much easier than I thought it would be.

Then I did some more figuring. Being the computer geek that I am, I made an excel training log (tracking number of miles run, classes attended, forms completed, etc). It was only after writing some snazzy excel functions that I realized the total number of form sections I'll be doing this month won't add up to enough whole forms for me to be on target.



If I want to stay honest, those 10 form sections I went through suddenly can only be counted as 2.5. So my original training estimation was a bit light. By about 250. Uh oh. Some more accurate arithmetic revealed that for the next month I'll have to do these form sections about 25 times per day to stay on target. Looks like I'll be outside a bit longer in the morning.

Days until tournament: 46