Eight Brocades (baduanjin)

Some time ago, a facebook friend suggested that I research the  Quijong form Eight Brocades, as it might be of help to me with my breathing and relaxation.  Given that I currently have some time on my hands, and I have been looking for a regular workout that sorts these needs, I thought I would do just that.

The form goes by a number of different names: Eight Brocades, Eight Section Brocade, Eight Pieces of Brocade, for example.  There appear to be many different ways of doing it, and in different sequences, but the eight elements are all obviously of similar origins.  It is historically a very old form, maybe 1000 year or more.

One  historical account has it  that Marshal Yue Fei molded it from a longer form in the mid 1100s from concern for his warriors.  The Song Dynasty (960-1279) was a tough tie in Chinese History with many wars. Yue Fei was a poor boy with a childhood filled with turmoil and poverty.  He entered the army at nine and rapidly rose within the ranks and by twenty-six he was a general.

There are so many different versions of the form, especially when looking at videos, it was hard to find one that was easy to understand, so I decided to pick one that was text based and used older illustrations, so that I would need to work it out from first principles. I went for:

Eight Section Brocade- baduanjin

There is an accompanying video that the author said included most of the elements, but even then that varied from the text in terms of sequence and some of the interpretation. What I want to do here is document what I am doing for each of the sequences, under their given names and then show the final version of the form at the end.

After reading the text description and working outr my own version, I then modified what I was doing to remove any major errors (I hope).  I am not going to give the actual descriptions and associated "good for" descriptions, as these are all included in the above link.  However I will say that I do believe given time, this will be of benefit to me not just for breathing and relaxation, but potentially in other ways too.  If you get this for,. hope you enjoyed reading and stay on to take a look at the videos.

Two Hands Hold up the Heavens

Drawing the bow to shoot the hawk

Separating Heaven And Earth

Wise Owl Gazes Backwards

Punching with an angry Gaze

Big Bear Turns from Side to Side

Touching Toes then Bending Backwards

Bouncing on the Toes

Eight Brocades (all eight elements)

Hope you found this interesting, if you got this far, thank you for looking ☺☺☺

A trinity of training

This has been more of a doing rather than a blogging week: for both my physical and mental health , I have thrown myself a little more into the practical side, trying to do my own workouts, incorporating refreshers of the previous lesson(s) where possible,  I think to start with I will leave Sunday as a day off and concentrate on actually doing two 20 to 25 minute sessions on the Tuesdays and Thursdays (as I did this week), gradually building them up to 30 minutes OR adding another session on the Sunday.  

This all depends on circumstances of course.  However, I think having some plan, any plan to focus on, is a major must have in trying to cope with the isolation and frustrations of been cooped up, that I am sure everyone is feeling right now.  I have been luck to find online mentors in Robey Jenkins, Noah Legel and Les Bubka, who have helped me develop my own cardio, breathing and relaxation routine to complement the wonderful work that Ben and Alison do with us and our families, so to all five a massive thank you 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙇🙇🙇🙇🙇✊✊✊✊✊

The dojo diary this week is as given below. All were enjoyable lessons, and although I struggle in places (out at midday today was one of them lol), in general I'm getting through them with only the odd hiccup:

0604

Warm up
Mokosu and formal opening
punches, kicks and receiving techniques
Solo pad work, building up jab, cross, elbow knee combinations
Drilling the combination worked out on the pads
Shadow sparring
Kata - Naihanchi Shodan only.

0904

Warm up
Mokosu and formal opening
Quadrant drill
Jab, cross. hook
Hammerfist, looping left, hook
Backhand slap, elbow, step back left knee, step back, right knee
Headbutt, break grasp, shoulder barge.
Right mawashi-geri, land behind, swap stance,, left mawashi geri, land behind, swap stance, right mawashi geri, hold on kick, land behind, right mawashi geri, spin through, land in fighting stance, ashe uke
Mai geri, ball of foot to solar plexus, mai geri, ball of foot to solar plexus, mai geri, top of foot to groin
Left back fist, cross, jab, cross, jab
Right lower punch to organs, left lower punch to organs, right lower punch, bob and weave, step back open hand
Kata - Naihanchi Shodan only

1104

Warm up 
Mokosu and formal opening
Kicks, slow to knee, hold, extend, hold.  5 slow, then 5 fast:
Mai geri, right then left.
Ushiro geri, right then left
Yoku geri, right then left
Mawashi geri, right then left
Reminded to use chair to practice for balance, as per one of last week's lessons
Pad work, both sides working up to three strike combination.
Cross, Elbow, Cross then elbow, Knee, Cross, Elbow, knee
Finally 10 times through combination each side

Stretched out (on the rack)

Waking up this morning, was aching in places I hadn't really ached before.  The Monday night session had been tough as it was hot and sweaty, which saps me quicker than other conditions and had needed more breaks than I usually do nowadays.  The aches afterwards though were as if had been stretched out, as I imagine, on a rack.

I tried to think back through the lesson as to what might have caused the aches: We did fundamentals (punches, receiving, kicks), a lot of Kata practice, pad work and Nunchaku.  The latter was fun, but as it was only the second time I had used them, might have resulted in some bruises and soreness.

There was nothing there that should have caused the stiffness, then my my mind went back to the stretches and I think I found the cause.   Our Sensei have started introducing different stretches, and two in particular stood out:

1)   Linking arms with partner,
      back to back walk down to sitting position,
      partner one leans forward, whilst partner two arches 
      back, so is stretched out on back of partner one,
      hold for 10 seconds,
      back to sitting position,
      partner two and one swap roles in stretch, partner one
      on back of partner two and hold for 10 seconds,
      back to sitting position
      back to back walk up

2)  Linking arms back to back with partner
      partner one squats and leans forward,
      partner two arches and is pulled back, until body
      weight is supported by partner one
      partner one does 1o squat lifts......

I didn't manage stretch number two beyond trying to get my partner onto my back as partner one, and my partner managing a couple of squats with difficulty due to my shifting body weight as partner two.  Am certain though that these two stretches are the guilty ones for this morning's aches 😊😊

Flowing in the Dojo

Today was a challenging day in the dojo, but an interesting one too.  From a personal point of view, not at my best due to things going on around me.  So not enough sleep and a bit too much stress make for a not too sharp me, but I tried to work through it.

We did a slightly different warm up today, with some different stretches, then in to basics.   We went through all the punches, kicks and receiving techniques, then started to look at a relatively new drill.

We worked through it stage by stage, both with and without pads.  Once a particular element was covered, it was added to the flow drill.  After that, at each point we needed to repeat the key elements just looked at, then perform the flow drill from the start to the point we had just got to.  

At the end point of the main lesson, each pair was asked to perform the flow drill to see how much we had learnt.  I lost it round about the forearm strike.  The full drill is given in outline below; thank you Ben for the corrections 😊😊.

#1   LH jab                 #2 RH parry, head to right
#1  RH cross                 #2 LH parry, head to left
#1   LH hook                 #2 Step in, two handed upper arm block and spread (Nidan)
#1  RH hammer fist         #2 Step back, cross arm block
#1  LH hook                 #2 Step in, two handed upper arm block, inc LH shuto to neck
#1  RH hook                 #2 Step back to cat stance, LH block
#1  LH backfist         #2 RH receive   
#1  Forearm  strike         #2 Naihanchi block, LH palm up RH palm down
#1  LH uppercut to ribs #2 RH Gedan Uke
#1 RH uppercut to ribs #2 LH Gedan Uke
#1 LH haito to kneck
#1 RH haito to kneck
#1 grasp behind kneck, using thumbs as 5th finger (gable lock)
#1 pull head down  switch leg back
#1 left knee strike
#1 switch legs, right knee strike
                        #2 Head up, break out, link hands

#1 head butt

The drill was both challenging and fun 😊😊.  For the last part of the lesson we did bo work, the first 6 kihon katas.  As there were a good few people, we had to split into two groups to accommodate us all, but it was fun.  So much so, that me and my son went to the park later to practice.  Here i am doing kihon Katas Godan and Rokadan (badly but enthusiastically) 😊😊.

Hope you enjoyed 🙏

Facebook Mentoring

Mentoring - I recently took part in a mentoring scheme in a Facebook group to work on Cardio Vascular exercise for my heart condition, In addition to adding to the stretches and exercises I use, also the developed the use of slow kata as CV exercise. A big thank you to Robey Jenkins, who acted as my mentor 🙏. This is the article on which the kata work is based:

Karate Katas Yoga

The idea of doing tai chi style Kata was supported by my sister, who did Judo when younger and does Tai Chi now when she can; she is 11 years older than me, but still active 😊.  In addition to the kata, we also worked on adding to my stretches, plus punches to try and help me improve on my chicken winged style (emphasising practicing tsuke punches by rotating the hips and sliding my arm by my side when delivering a punch).

My initial tai chi style kata was based on Naihanchi Shodan, but now I try to follow it with Nidan as well. My Sensei says my posture has improved greatly and so have some of the other elements, so not only has this provided a good source of Cardio Vascular exercise it has also actually (in my mind) helped me improve this aspect of my Karate as well 😊

This is the latest video of my exercise kata:

Adding to my home practice

For myself,  noticed that my kicks haven't improved as much as some other aspects of my Karate.  Mostly it seems to be working my upper and lower body together thats the issue, my arms and my feet don't seem to want to work as one.

As a result, there is nowhere near as much accuracy in my kicks as there needs to be. So I went looking online for some ideas.  What I came up with was to hold my hands on my hips whilst kicking low.   This doesn't help with the Mawasha Geri kick, but should help with the Yoko and Ushiro Geri kicks.

I've been trying this for a few weeks now and I think its made a difference.  I've added a video here for reference:

In addition to this, my mentor has noticed that my punching posture is sloppy as a result of my elbows throwing out sideways as I punch.  So both as Cardio-Vascular exercise and to improve my punches, he has suggested doing slow Choko Tsuki punches, concentrating on keeping my arms by my side whilst punching.  He had earlier suggested added an extra stretch into my routine (bending at the waist, hands down by ankles), so I have added another video to show my attempts at both:

Finally, I have enough confidence to practice my slow Kata outside now, and on the day my son recorded the below video with me, he went through all the Naihanchi Kata, plus we did flow drills.  Both the specific one we use in our dojo and the Naihanchi drill as I believe is taught by Sensei Abernethy.  No videos of those though, we were a little involved at the time 😊😊

They're Back 😊

Sensei Alison and Ben back from Okinawa, and back in the Dojo.  Sensei Graham was there too, plus the largest adult class for a long time 😊  Wonderful enthusiasm levels, plus a strenouous work out: Back to basics, punches blocks and kicks to start of after the warm up and stretches.

That was followed by Kata, Naihanchi Shodan, plus a run through of Niedan and Sandan for me, plus the Pinan Katas up for some of the higher grades.  I think my Naihanchi Shodan is showing distinct signs of improvement, but so much to do on the other Naihanchis.

That was followed by Pad work, and finally some combination work; reciving and giving personal choice attacking combinations.  Was definitely in need of that workou.t 😊😊😊  

Also, I think I've found an additional way of practicing and improving my Yoko and Ushiro Geri kicks, but I need to check with my Sensei to make sure it will help me in the right direction. Today was a bit busy though so will need to wait for a little while😊

Trying something new, kata tai chi style

I chatted with my mentor today. He likes the idea of my blog to record where I'm at, and from the videos made some suggestions on how I might improve my exercises.  On my existing stretches, my Zenkutsu dachi stretch needs to be made safer, by being my knee more to reduce the risk of popping my lower back muscles.

An additional stretch has been suggested; a forward fold, to stretch the lower back.  Bend forward at 90 degrees with hands on knees, this augments the Zenkutsu dachi stretch, without going too far and damaging muscles.

Hes also keen on Kata as a form of excersise, but says at the moment my shoulders are too rigid.  He says the movements are natural and to relax into them more.  Exactly the point my Senseis make to me.  For exercise he suggests doing them tai chi style, slow and flowing if possible.  I've spoken to my sister on this one, as she is older than me and actually does tai chi when her health allows.

I've tried this a couple of times already, and when I feel more confident with it, may share of video of Naihanchi Shodan done in that style for exercise purposes.  As a comment on my Kata as it stands, again reinforcing my Senseis points, my strikes are floppy at times, and lack intent.  But hopefully this is something that good practising will correct.

Will let you know how it goes 😊😊😊😊