Montage

By David Mandeix
David is a Green Belt at Wu Dao

Scarcely a week remains before the big competition, and in any feel-good-overcome-all-odds-to-discover-yourself-and-get-the-girl kungfu movie it would be about time for a training montage. The montage is often the best part of the film; for some reason we enjoy watching people toil and suffer as the execute tasks only barely connected to their end goal of martial arts mastery (sanding floors, waxing cars, painting houses, etc). Maybe we enjoy the weird things they do, or the moment all those weird things suddenly make sense and are revealed to be kungfu moves. At the end of the montage though, our 98-lb weakling with a glass jaw has become an unstoppable kungfu machine.

We all know (or should know) that this scenario is so far fetched as to border on the ridiculous. However, I had an unexpectedly "montage-y" moment last night in kungfu- and I was absolutely as excited about it as I would have been watching a movie. Let me explain-

Preparing for the tournament has narrowed the focus of our martial arts training. We have spent a great deal of time doing forms, refining our movements and correcting flaws in our techniques. What we have not been doing with similar regularity is pound away at the heavy bags. Bag work is great- great fun, great exercise, and a great way to gauge how powerful your technique is without actually hitting someone. Hitting a heavy bag also tends to shift your focus towards generating power, rather than refining your technique.

Imagine my surprise when I stepped up to the heavy bag for the first time in months and unleashed a devastating kick that sent the bag flying! Where had this come from? I hadn't worked on kicking things as hard as I could for months. What's more, I was exhausted and struggling to make it through the second class. Out of practice and with out of gas, I almost wondered if maybe Sifu had dumped some sand out of the bags.

In the warm glow of (confused) accomplishment the past month spent correcting techniques, kicking air, repeating excruciatingly fine detail work played through my head- and I'll be damned if it didn't feel as though I were at the tail end of a montage! I am certain that the additional training we were doing contributed to my improved kicks, and yet we never actually focused on being able to kick the bags hard.

So aside from swelling with pride* at my new kicks, my experience made me reflect upon how we can always be training kungfu, even if it does not particularly feel like it. While it is true that you cannot get good at something you do not work hard at, sometimes you don’t even know you are doing the hard work. Doing "downward dog" or 10-elements fist does not feel like it would or should help my kicks- but maybe it does. Every time you practice, you extend your capabilities by a small degree and further refine your control, power, and precision. Naturally this will extend to the rest of the body as well- which can have some surprising results.


*(Pride which lasted maybe half an hour before being ground down under further merciless kungfu training)