Monday, April 19, 2010
Orlando Cela is an instructor at Wu Dao Kung Fu and Tai Chi
Today started at 6 am with the early class. Luckily enough is only one hour long. Starts with a long run around one of the huge city blocks, goes uphill the mountain then downhill, then flat, then all the way uphill to the school. Pretty grueling! Thank goodness we haven’t had any breakfast yet! Running for me has never been a problem, so I always tried to remain with the leader, which would change – some of the students would walk, others would keep running, then switch roles, etc., but there was always someone running ahead. We made it back to school, and then the fun begin. I was able to keep my own, and even do something unexpected that made some very surprised, and one say “see? ji ben gong! ji ben gong!” (In order to keep the legendary perception of the early class, I shall say no more.) Breakfast, then 9 am class. Jiao Liang (coach) Lily was there after dropping her kid off at school. (FYI: they give ID cards to the parents with their kids photos for them to be able to retrieve them later without taking some other kid!) The class, as usual, started with a run, but this was a race. So we race uphill, and some lag behind, but I manage to keep always ahead of he group, with another student. The last section, which is downhill, was a pretty fast sprint between one student and I. We arrived at the school first together. Then we did the usual warm-ups, and stretching, etc., but we did some new stance work besides the usual ma bu - gong bu: pu bu – ma bu – gong bu, pu bu – pu bu (swinging arms and slapping the floor in between); straight punch, dan tui, straight punch; palm strike, deng tui, palm strike; and then some extraordinary stationary variations on the 18 ji ben gong. Each of them has their own “yibai.” The only ji ben gong we didn’t do stationary, but all single count and together, were xuan feng jiao and wai bai lien. Rest. Coach Lily started me on the form mei hua dao (“you are getting the sword ji ben gong quickly. More practice, but let’s begin the form”). Lunch time. Ever since they found out that I love spicy food, they keep bringing all sort of different homemade concoctions. I consider this as much part of my training as the gong fu itself, so I take all. Nothing has burned me yet. Yet... But this one was close: a reddish paste (in a bottle that once was liquid yogurt) that watered my eyes after smelling it. They put it in my rice. I eat two bowls with the usual side dishes. Not good. After a short nap I had such heartburn I thought I was going to vomit trying the no-handed cartwheels (note: at 2 pm, the students do academics, so it was just Lily and me). And the fact that my muscles were absolutely sore by now didn’t help. I think I did overdid it in the morning because the afternoon was excruciatingly difficult, but it was this morning that told me that I am not so far behind the locals. I should mention that one of the students asked me to go in front of him today during warm ups because he had a cramp! (hee, hee...)
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