I just started Kung Fu this past Monday. The training is very very painful. The horse stance in particular. To give an idea of the pain, my legs were legitimately shaking and giving out about 20 minutes into the session yesterday, but I persisted for about an hour and a half. I much rather would have sprained my knee or something than gone through this (I haven’t experienced many other injuries to compare to this).
They teach that you can choose/learn to ignore the pain. The purpose of the past session seems to be for me to learn “mind over matter” and ignore the pain.
Anyway, I’m hoping that the “mind over matter” skill will translate to other areas of my life (they say it will). Maybe it’ll help me to not procrastinate. To have the strength to make uncomfortable decisions (although I’m already pretty good at that). To ignore the things that make me unhappy.
Don’t overdo the “ignore the pain” part. Pain is functionally useful and ignoring it makes it likely you’ll break something in your body. Yes, you’ll need to cross the lactic acid threshold, but be smart about it.
Some martial arts schools (and Crossfit studios) have a very macho “do or die” attitude—make sure you don’t go down the second path X-)
That’s something I had been struggling with—by ignoring pain I may be ignoring a useful signal. And to be honest my body really was feeling like it was starting to fail. But the instructor assured me that I was fine and that he was monitoring me, and he knows the signs and stuff, so I sort of decided to trust him… but I have a hard time fully trusting anyone.
You need to get a bit more sophisticated about pain and learn to distinguish different kinds of it. Some pain you can or should just power through, and some you can’t or shouldn’t.
For example, the “overexerted muscle pain” (aka hitting the lactic acid threshold) is easy to recognize and is pretty harmless most of the time. But a sharp pain in your joint (e.g. a knee) is an excellent reason to immediately stop whatever you are doing and figure out what’s wrong.
Except for the motivation-sapping “aargh fsck everything about this” part that makes people never go to the gym a month after their New Years Eve promise :) Better to stay inside the comfort zone until you are fully committed / made it into a habit so unlikely to chicken out and then gradually expand it.
Interesting. I started boxing, then moved over to kick-boxing. I have a hunch that Western / heavily Westernized MAs are a better fit for people living in Western circumstances. At least I don’t have to deal with fake spirituality—it is clearly sold as a combat sport, not as a spiritual path. By fake spirituality I mean I had my fair share of Zen and Vajrayana meditations, which are fairly efficient at creating altered mind-states, and yet they happened rarely and not very deeply, because I am not a Zen monk doing it all day but a normal guy who catches three half hours to sit a week. Same was if people would be doing kung-fu for 10 hours a day in a Shaolin monastery for a decade (which is probably less efficient at creating altered mind-states than meditation) perhaps some satori type spiritual breakthroughs would be likely, but I am sure the way we usually do it − 2-3 1.5 hour long trainings a week—every spiritual aspect must be pretty fake and this is part of the reasons I try to go on a more Western path of martial arts where they don’t try to sell me spirituality at all.
It may be also meaningful that in kick-boxing everything we do seem to make sense for me. Non-combat exercises develop total body mobility, cardio and strength alongside with control and coordination and balance at the same time, such as running backwards while throwing heavy medicine balls to each other, or running from one to end of the mat to another touching the ground at the end, and when the trainer claps going prone and jumping up, or going down in a push-up position and trying to slap each others knuckles while trying to avoid such slaps from others, or pool noddle fencing, or sitting on an exercise ball without feet on the ground and throwing heavy medicine balls to each other etc. They all seem to develop multiple aspects of the body and mind towards combat.
I would be very skeptical if I had to do things like the horse stance. I don’t see its utility much. Perhaps all this pain tolerance thing makes sense in a monastery doing it 10 hours a day, as part of a legitimate spiritual path, but isolated in 2-3 treenings on weekday evenings like most people in the West do it seems a but superfluous to me. Strictly from a combat use of legs angle as opposed to quasi-spirituality angle, just doing squat-jumps and stretching with splits seems do more.
Nevertheless, give it a fair try, just try to not buy into any kind of “Asian people know mysterious spiritual secrets unknown to Western man” thing. If it is something that works, pretty sure Western e.g. boxers or MMA guys are doing it it already, after all kung-fu movies are popular since the 1970′s so there was plenty of time to learn. If you cannot imagine they would be doing anything like this, be skeptical.
Thanks for the advice, that does make sense. I’m skeptical about the efficiency of the methods too. It seems pretty one-sized fits all without much thought into what the persons goals are. Nevertheless, I don’t have too much of a choice, and I think it’s worth continuing for at least a month. But if I were serious about martial arts and wanted to do it long-term, I’d look for something more efficient.
In a somewhat similar context I was taught to focus on other body parts, checking the stance or just forcing myself to pay attention to my fists whatever leg muscles have to say. It helped. It was easier than just ignoring the pain.
ETA also, when you learn to relax certain muscles and strain others (like in reaching your toes), it will become much easier.
I just started Kung Fu this past Monday. The training is very very painful. The horse stance in particular. To give an idea of the pain, my legs were legitimately shaking and giving out about 20 minutes into the session yesterday, but I persisted for about an hour and a half. I much rather would have sprained my knee or something than gone through this (I haven’t experienced many other injuries to compare to this).
They teach that you can choose/learn to ignore the pain. The purpose of the past session seems to be for me to learn “mind over matter” and ignore the pain.
Anyway, I’m hoping that the “mind over matter” skill will translate to other areas of my life (they say it will). Maybe it’ll help me to not procrastinate. To have the strength to make uncomfortable decisions (although I’m already pretty good at that). To ignore the things that make me unhappy.
Don’t overdo the “ignore the pain” part. Pain is functionally useful and ignoring it makes it likely you’ll break something in your body. Yes, you’ll need to cross the lactic acid threshold, but be smart about it.
Some martial arts schools (and Crossfit studios) have a very macho “do or die” attitude—make sure you don’t go down the second path X-)
I’ll try :)
That’s something I had been struggling with—by ignoring pain I may be ignoring a useful signal. And to be honest my body really was feeling like it was starting to fail. But the instructor assured me that I was fine and that he was monitoring me, and he knows the signs and stuff, so I sort of decided to trust him… but I have a hard time fully trusting anyone.
You need to get a bit more sophisticated about pain and learn to distinguish different kinds of it. Some pain you can or should just power through, and some you can’t or shouldn’t.
For example, the “overexerted muscle pain” (aka hitting the lactic acid threshold) is easy to recognize and is pretty harmless most of the time. But a sharp pain in your joint (e.g. a knee) is an excellent reason to immediately stop whatever you are doing and figure out what’s wrong.
Except for the motivation-sapping “aargh fsck everything about this” part that makes people never go to the gym a month after their New Years Eve promise :) Better to stay inside the comfort zone until you are fully committed / made it into a habit so unlikely to chicken out and then gradually expand it.
Interesting. I started boxing, then moved over to kick-boxing. I have a hunch that Western / heavily Westernized MAs are a better fit for people living in Western circumstances. At least I don’t have to deal with fake spirituality—it is clearly sold as a combat sport, not as a spiritual path. By fake spirituality I mean I had my fair share of Zen and Vajrayana meditations, which are fairly efficient at creating altered mind-states, and yet they happened rarely and not very deeply, because I am not a Zen monk doing it all day but a normal guy who catches three half hours to sit a week. Same was if people would be doing kung-fu for 10 hours a day in a Shaolin monastery for a decade (which is probably less efficient at creating altered mind-states than meditation) perhaps some satori type spiritual breakthroughs would be likely, but I am sure the way we usually do it − 2-3 1.5 hour long trainings a week—every spiritual aspect must be pretty fake and this is part of the reasons I try to go on a more Western path of martial arts where they don’t try to sell me spirituality at all.
It may be also meaningful that in kick-boxing everything we do seem to make sense for me. Non-combat exercises develop total body mobility, cardio and strength alongside with control and coordination and balance at the same time, such as running backwards while throwing heavy medicine balls to each other, or running from one to end of the mat to another touching the ground at the end, and when the trainer claps going prone and jumping up, or going down in a push-up position and trying to slap each others knuckles while trying to avoid such slaps from others, or pool noddle fencing, or sitting on an exercise ball without feet on the ground and throwing heavy medicine balls to each other etc. They all seem to develop multiple aspects of the body and mind towards combat.
I would be very skeptical if I had to do things like the horse stance. I don’t see its utility much. Perhaps all this pain tolerance thing makes sense in a monastery doing it 10 hours a day, as part of a legitimate spiritual path, but isolated in 2-3 treenings on weekday evenings like most people in the West do it seems a but superfluous to me. Strictly from a combat use of legs angle as opposed to quasi-spirituality angle, just doing squat-jumps and stretching with splits seems do more.
Nevertheless, give it a fair try, just try to not buy into any kind of “Asian people know mysterious spiritual secrets unknown to Western man” thing. If it is something that works, pretty sure Western e.g. boxers or MMA guys are doing it it already, after all kung-fu movies are popular since the 1970′s so there was plenty of time to learn. If you cannot imagine they would be doing anything like this, be skeptical.
Thanks for the advice, that does make sense. I’m skeptical about the efficiency of the methods too. It seems pretty one-sized fits all without much thought into what the persons goals are. Nevertheless, I don’t have too much of a choice, and I think it’s worth continuing for at least a month. But if I were serious about martial arts and wanted to do it long-term, I’d look for something more efficient.
In a somewhat similar context I was taught to focus on other body parts, checking the stance or just forcing myself to pay attention to my fists whatever leg muscles have to say. It helped. It was easier than just ignoring the pain. ETA also, when you learn to relax certain muscles and strain others (like in reaching your toes), it will become much easier.