Six Skills to Develop Wushu Mastery

[@WushuAdventures]

Thanks for watching this SUPER LONG video! :-) Hopefully everything makes sense. And apologies for the blown out audio. I had the gain turned up a bit high on the mic at home, and the mic in the park had some challenges when it was super windy.

[@JayJieRS]

Wow. What a rough couple of weeks! Not that you need any more distractions, but I think you experienced string theory chaos! It's incredible how people process, analyze and deal with what life throws in their direction. I maintain right now that I am like Earth hurtling through space and trying to ward off life's meteorites that come too close to impact. Process, react, move on. I was actually thinking while watching this video that the video itself appears to be a distraction from your wushu goals but then I had a change of heart. Even though you were not able to do your Wushu practice and that made you feel disappointed in yourself, the fact that you spent a huge chunk of time talking about the whys, to me, actually reinforces the desire to recommit yourself to your goals! You gotta wanna, right? Often times when I can't physically practice Wushu (like waiting at the doctor's office, for instance), I can always *think* Wushu or Taichi. It gives me time to reflect and reboot my desires and own goals as an instructor and practioner. I know these videos are time consuming and maybe a distraction unless you really feel that accountability and being out of your comfort zone is important, but I personally would like to see more. Again, it's the ripple effect. Your journey is our journey, too, towards better Wushu. It's like reel-to-reel music where you'd load up one reel of recorded tape onto a machine and then you thread the tape onto an empty receiving tape, turn on the machine and music would come out. Confused? Ask your parents! Lol! Seriously, keep up the great work, take care of yourself, and be able to forgive yourself for not meeting your own expectations. Like you said, this is a journey. Jiayou!!!!! 👊😊 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦

[@wushuquestofficial]

LOL you killed me with the record metaphor 🤣🤣🤣 I know the feeling! On a more serious note, Mark, this video is soooo important! You've talked about so many essential things you could have made a video for each of them. These are really key to personal and physical improvement, you could also make a free PDF of an IG carousel with bullet points so that we don't forget haha. Consistency is also an issue for me, because of distractions and because I'm good at executing, but terrible at planning. So because I've often got no plan, I end up wondering why I'm executing 🤔 Discomfort is also a big thing. I do that all the time, since I train mostly by myself, even with my master. Maybe these examples will give you ideas to implement discomfort in your training = - with my coach / master when he says "let's do the this one more time" I always at least to it 2 more times even if I'm dying. - I hold my Mabu longer than the day before every day. Even if just for one second. Same goes for splits, head to toe... - Cardio is something I find very easy to test discomfort. If I'm doing HIIT type of training, I'll add one extra round of each exercise. If I'm running I'll do extra minutes of sprints at the end of my run. ... ETC. You got the idea, I'm just pushing myself through my mind and body limits to go through discomfort because that's when I improve the most. Especially true as I'm training alone. In group class, I'm a bit competitive so I'll always do more than the one I think is better than me 😂

[@RebeccaChinn]

Hi Mark! Thanks again for making this video! I just wanted to say that I really appreciate that by choosing to be on this journey, you're really putting yourself out "in the arena", if you will. Willingness to do this is a quality that I really respect and appreciate in a person, so jiayou!! I guess I have a bit of a different framework to understand and interpret your experience. Let me know if it resonates with you. You 1) did your due diligence to make a well reasoned training plan and then 2) gave your best effort to execute that plan. but 3) were interrupted by demands of other things that are core to your life - your job and religious practice. Maybe the weeks of training didn't go as you hoped, but I can't find anywhere where you went "wrong." From my perspective, those few weeks of missed training is not at all a derailment or failure of your grit or determination. It was a miscalculation of the energy required to maintain the core aspects of your life, given the finite amount of hours in the day/amount of energy a human can reasonably expend. I know waaaay too many people who are incredibly capable and driven (lol most of my friends are like this, actually... i'm drawn to these kinds of people :D ), and get overloaded, and then beat themselves up when they don't meet their goal, but that goal might not have actually been physically possible. It actually drives me crazy that wonderful and determined people go to bed thinking of themselves as awful or lazy because they didn't meet expectations that couldn't have been met anyway, with a person's given resources. For me, coming back from training full time in china to working a full time job was a terrible transition. I longed to keep training at China volume, but was working 40 hours a week, so I'd keep showing up to my training / train by myself at ever spare moment, but be completely exhausted, and could only put out shitty reps... And then try extra hard the next time because I felt guilty about my shitty practice, but then i'd over exert myself and make the next next practice even worse....and because I was so exhausted (and anxious about my job), I was constantly over eating, and surrounded by food at my office, and rapidly gaining weight... I felt terrible. The problem wasn't that I lacked determination, but that my expectations weren't realistic. What *was* realistic was backing down to only training two 80 minute sessions a week. Which, coming back from China, was agony, but that's all I could consistently handle. And then slowly, we added in 15 minutes each week or biweekly, until I could consistently handle all the volume of high-quality training that wanted. Up until then, only showing up twice a week was "success" for me because "success" was very deliberately not overexerting myself at any one point, so that I would never reach a state of overexertion, so I could keep training well. Training the volume that I wanted was a solvable problem, but not by grit, but through realistic, sustainable expectations that were waay lower than I wanted for months. Maybe your consistency could improved by saying "no" to other things like guitar or japanese, but it doesn't seem like you can say no to your religion or job. And that's probably a good thing in the pursuit of a holistically meaningful life, right? but this may require you to reevaluate your expectations or definition of success. For example, could you still see it as success if you deliberately ramp down training for a couple weeks while other demands of life are higher, then get right back to it when you have the resources? Is it possible or reasonable for you to take a day off of work to just train/do training related things? Would you ever consider yourself being "consistent" towards your wushu goals if you prioritize your job, given that your job is an important part of saving money to do more wushu in the future? Just food for thought... The video helped me I realize that I actually am doing a poor job of having focus in my own life, and that my priorities are too many, and I'm tired, and it's definitely showing up in my training and overall day-to-day disposition. I've been irritable :P I was inspired to 1) quit my Chinese class, (which I've been meeeeaning to do for the longest time, as improving my chinese isnt a high priority, but I've stayed in the class for social reasons) 2) reduce my IG posting frequency and 3) take a couple afternoons "off" from doing much of anything this week. But yeah. That's my two cents. It's a bit of a different perspective on your situation, hopefully a more generous one. I don't remember where the quote is from, but it's something along the lines of "the priest questions his faith, the soldier doubts his courage," and likewise, the guy who's spent years of his life studying wushu, lived in china, is rehabilitating his body in his 50's to later dedicate MORE time to wushu... this is the guy who doesnt feel like he's prioritizing wushu enough :P Also, don't feel the need to reply to this comment unless you really want to, I encourage you to go make a vlog or train instead :D jiayou!

[@WushuAdventures]

Thank you for this comment! ... followed by 3 months of silence on my channel ... lol! But slow isn't the same as stopped, right? ;-)

[@RebeccaChinn]

@@WushuAdventures definitely!!! Jiayou!!!

[@NexusJunisBlue]

Great video! 100% agree and relate!

[@sousalarson6858]

OHNO! I am sorry for making you feel worse :( I just wanted to make sure you hadnt hurt yourself! Yoooo! Consistency Yes! I feel that 10000% I am all about doing all the research and taking the first step but the second i hit any aspect that is hard or im not good at i drop it like its hot and fond a new thing. I hate it. Skil 1: I have a lot going on and thats just how i live my life. For me, where this hit hardest, was with saying no to the things that actively hurt my training. Doing my other hobbies isnt nearly as detrimental as, say, my food choices. My goal is really just to be able to move without pain and i know a lot of the food i cant say no to hurt that goal. :/

[@antonykahuro8349]

Hi Mark, what happened to Wushu 52 weekly videos? Hope you are okay though

[@WushuAdventures]

Thanks for asking! I just posted an update. :-)