#lnkf

Thursday’s #latenitekungfu session was pretty low-key. Monk was fresh from the dojo where he’s been cross-training in Judo with Tiger and in unusually high spirits. Being a white belt again has activated a long-dead joy that I think most martial artists cease to feel once they’ve trained for a while. There’s just something unique about being a beginner that’s hard to replicate. 

What I like is the feeling of no expectation, Monkey says from his carved-out little corner of the world. I enjoy my chats with him but miss the constant companionship of when he lived with Dragon and I, just one door down from me. Little has changed, I imagine. I know he sits there in his swivel chair with his feet pulled up underneath him and sips something lukewarm while he studies, indulging my questions and poetic musings. 

The cloth around your waist doesn’t tell a faithful story about your skill, he laments. I love that I can make errors without feeling like I’m supposed to be a representation of the school or style. I had forgotten what it was like to watch a demonstration and not know where to start. Judo is making my body move in ways I haven’t moved before, just as Kung Fu did when I started. I feel my knowledge expanding at a rapid rate, which is the greatest feeling there is. 

On the mat last night Monk talked me through some basic Judo, as a preface to beginning my own cross-training adventure. At his dojo, everyone is offered a free trial class, and if things go well enough, I might end up their newest judoka. 

For an hour we grappled. I felt the full effects of being a beginner again as we rolled: the awkwardness of the movements and the elation of success. Afterward I lay sweat-soaked and exhausted on the mat, and Monkey quizzed me on what we’d gone over. 

Kesa gatame, he started with the easiest one. We’d spent the majority of our time drilling it. “Head-in-arm position,” I replied. Ippon seoi nage. “One-arm hip throw.” Osoto gari. “That’s the sweep.” Uchi komi. “Practicing setting up.” Neiwaza. “Grappling.” Randori. “Throwing, but you can only grab from the waist up.” Hajime. “Begin.” Good. 

I know it’s about the shittiest pop-up in the world, but it’s the first one I’ve ever done in my whole life, and I am so glad I had the foresight to set up the camera. I only intended to record the practice - which, so far, has amounted to getting a little airborne but never even getting my feet underneath me - for the sake of seeing what I looked like as I spent the next few weeks trying to achieve the pop-up. 

Late nite kung fu. Following some key advice I had received from The Dragon about kicking straight up into the air, I had managed to get my feet underneath me about fifteen minutes into practicing the motion. After a dozen similar attempts, I excitedly called Monkey over to my side of the school to show him. He stood there, hands on his hips, quietly analyzing my efforts - quintessentially so. I made my attempt, my feet meeting the floor just before my back crashed back down. Expectedly, he forwent praise in favor of a suggestion. Do a sit-up. Blankly, I obeyed. Now do a sit-up in the air. 

I smiled. I smiled because Monkey’s suggestive critique is nearly always foolproof. Whether or not my body can keep up physically is another matter. But a sit-up? I can do sit-ups all day. 

all my wolves begin to howl, 'wake me up, the time is now' body aches, I'm bound in chains, but there's a fire in my veins and there's a revolution coming 

On tonight’s episode of Late Nite Kung Fu...  Monkey and I spent the majority of the two-hour session working on nothing but kicks and sweeps. After a brief warm-up jog and some practice with diving shoulder rolls (and, of course, Monk’s patented walking stances), we moved into butterfly kicks, which are honestly not even in my repertoire. At most, I’ve dabbled in them when directed to do one or two as a class exercise, but I have never been formally instructed on how to do one. Monkey relayed some tips he originally gleaned from Tiger: basically, despite that we train traditional Shaolin kung fu, do some wushu! Then, fighting a pulled hamstring, he demonstrated the butterfly kick. As a disclaimer, Monk himself is not proud of the result and assures me he’s done much better in the past. I, however, still watch the clip with a childlike awe and all of his self-deprecation will never take that away from me. (Eat your heart out @pathofthemonkey!) I mean, come on, he was injured, and he still pulled this bad boy off.

Lessons learned: 1) Doing a wushu power stance makes you feel like a complete badass.  2) In wushu, Monkey explained, everything is tight, everything is powerful. There’s not a loose muscle or appendage in the stance, minus relaxed shoulders. The chin stays up, shoulders back, and the face is ready and still.  3) #2 can be applied to traditional kung fu, for sure! I have always struggled with keeping my chin up, for one. 

When I mimicked his stance, Monkey shook his head and proceeded to point out an umpteen number of ways to improve it. It continually amazes me the level of conscientiousness required to make this art the best it can be, down to making sure the tension is held in the right parts of the body. 

After sweeps and spinning crescent kicks (which I’m not going to embarrass myself discussing until I have some good progress down!) Monkey and I took a look at the curriculum boards, where everything a student is required to know is printed for their reference. 

Lessons learned: 1) I think too much. Progress is not made in the mind, but in the performance of the technique. My hang-up is that I don’t want to perform the technique until it’s perfect, as if I could somehow listen to and absorb all the information about that technique, let it marinate in my brain, and just spit out a golden example of what it is supposed to look like. I mean, if it really worked that way, we’d all be fucking beasts. Haha. I wish. 

Monkey: How are your side kicks? Me: I like to think they’re pretty good. 

I think you all know how that story ends.  Tonight was pretty lax. Monk’s injury meant he couldn’t train as hard as he’d have liked and I was in a chipper mood so there was a lot of laughing and joking, up until he tightened up and became stricter for the sake of getting things done. My side kicks elicited Monkey’s quintessential grimace, which I am well-accustomed to. He proceeded to break down the technique and after ten minutes of me missing the mark, I was sent to the wall to practice static holds while Monk made minute adjustments to my posture. 

My calves ached horribly, sore from this week’s leg day at the gym. By this point, the backs of my knees and quads also felt like hot Jell-O, protesting against every twist and trembling with the weight of my lifted leg. My obliques were forced to engage and felt as though they’d been gathering dust for months. These just weren’t things I was conscious of before, I’d realized with a sickened feeling in my gut. Subdued, I shut my mouth and focused on trying to power through and not put my leg down. 

When he finally ordained that I could rest, I retook my position on the mat thoroughly chastened, frustrated, and eyes watering from the pain, but resolute. About ten failed attempts later, something clicked, and as I extended my side kick I angled my torso in the direction of the strike and pulled my shoulder back, engaging the oblique. Monkey immediately came to life, praising the attempt. That was the one, he brightened. Again. 

I felt such a swell of relief but it let it be sucked down with my frustration and exhaustion, trying to keep my mind focused only the task itself. I am reminded of a Zen saying that more or less goes: Your mind is like a house. Leave a door open. Let emotions come and go, just don’t serve them tea. 

Lessons learned: 1) Progress for the sake of progress.  2) Training with your friends is fun. But a lot more gets done when you get serious.  3) 

I’m still internalizing this one. I understand that it means the work you put in to accomplishing something elicits a twofold response. First, the work itself costs you - it costs you time, energy, pain, frustration, and suffering. That’s eating bitter- what you are willing to do to accomplish something is directly correlated to how badass you’ll be at that thing when the work is done. (By the way, the work is never done.) Even literally, practicing your kung fu warms your body, taxes your muscles and bones and both weakens and strengthens you. But when you’ve mastered something, the warmth from that is the reward. That’s the satisfaction of knowing it’s under your belt. It’s basking in the glow of a fire you built. It’s having run the gauntlet and emerged on the other side intact and better off.  In five years, I may very well be an instructor at one of the most up-and-coming premiere Shaolin kung fu schools in the country. Dream big, right? We’ll see what happens. More on that later. 

Thanks for chilling with me, guys! Until next time -