Train hard, breathe easy I teach several kung fu classes per week. At the beginning of each is a warm-up and series of conditioning exercises which I lead. The students then follow me and listen to my instructions. Therefore it’s essential that I am not only able to perform these exercises – which can be hard and fast – but that I also have enough breath left over to be […]
As anyone who comes to my classes will know I talk a lot about leg strength. Basically, without strong legs you have no real support so your upper body will be full of tension to keep your weight off your weak legs. Strengthen your legs and your upper body can then relax down onto them and you will maintain great mobility and power well into your old age. I cannot […]
Chinese exercise is very different from Western exercise. Here in the West we don’t consider we’re doing exercise unless we’re struggling and straining, gasping and sweating. The aim is always harder, faster, more and more. We push our bodies to the maximum in the gym or pounding the streets but still we’re exhausted half the time and struggle with pain and limited mobility in older age. This kind of exercise […]
Visit almost any park in China at dawn and you will find people doing a variety of traditional exercises. These exercises will look nothing like Western exercise. Some of them will be moving in the intricate patterns of tai chi. Others will be standing completely still yet utterly relaxed in a variety of postures. Stranger still some of them will be walking round and round in a circle then doing […]
One of my main goals in this blog is to help your release the tension that is imprisoning your body and poisoning your mind. There are several different ways of doing so. One of these is to shake out your tension. In these posts you will learn to change the way you stand so that you aren’t holding onto the tensions you did previously, you learn to stretch so as […]