Jburns08

I'm traveling at the moment, but I'm out in Aurora.

Sounds like youre off to a great start! And great job on the weightloss so far! The cardio from running will be a great benefit. I'd suggest adding in some good bodyweight\flexibility work. Specifics will depend on what style you want to practice, but all of them benefit from cardio, flexibility, and general mobility work.

Currently I track when people owe, and how much. But I'd like to start tracking frequency of visits, current rank, if they have referred another student, and how many new students i've gotten in the month. I get by with my spreadsheets, just trying to make it a little more available for my other instructors. Right now I understand my sheets.... noone else does, lol. Any help or advice is appreciated

This might be a touch off topic, but not sure where else to post it. Does anyone here have experience with school management software, like Zen Planner or MindBody, from an owner perspective? I'm looking to improve our student tracking beyond my very basic spreadsheets.

I think it depend on where you are in your practice. At the beginning I would focus on your martial arts. Then start adding in some supplemental training to shore things up. I have recently added in some light strength training and cardio to my practice. The cardio is because it is a weak point for me to improve, and the strength training mostly because i miss it. My biggest advice with additional training, is to ease into it. Get your martial arts habits set, then add things in slowly.

I have found the same. My balance and power in shaolin have both improved greatly with my taiji. I also think my taiji has improved because of the shaolin. I think both complement each other very well.

Exciting! Glad you were able to find it. Its a pretty tough style to learn, but sounds like a awesome goal to work towards!

From my short experience, Drunken isn't normally taught as a style, but is usually a subset of forms. In our school it is taught as a higher level form in contemporary wushu, and hung gar\hung kuen (maybe the very high shaolin levels, but not sure). I would suggest looking around for wushu and Southern kung fu schools and see if they teach any drunken forms.

Welcome to the wonderful world of martial arts! I will 2nd the idea that you should go with the one you feel most comfortable with. Any good teacher will start you off slow, and help you learn based on your own body and ability. We have people of all wights in my school (I think I was about 230 when I started). That said, I will agree with DanTien, things that are very stance\kick heavy may be tough on your knees, but of course depends on the style. However you go, I think you will be surprised at how quickly your body will adapt, and in less than a month you will probably be able to do things you didn't think you could on your first day. I'm personally biased towards kungfu (depending on the style). Since you have said you are interested in Wing Chun, I think it is a great starting point. You literally don't move your feet in the first form, but the stance itself will do a lot to strengthen your legs and knees without undue strain. We typically teach Sil lum tau (the 1st form) between other forms to help people build strength.

A lot of the movements look vaguely Yang, but done very poorly. I'm also not aware of a 26 form in the traditional Yang style. 24 is usually considered the Yang standard, but this looks like a strange combination of 24 with 32 (sort of). I would suggest looking for a more traditional class, but it ultimately comes down to where you feel most comfortable.

I will agree with you there. Doing taiji wrong is just really bad taiji (and sadly too many 'masters do it badly), there is not much chance of hurting yourself.

I will 100% agree with @Sahaja that both are should be done with a teacher, even if only for a few classed. Alignment is very important for both, and that is something very, very few people can do intuitively. It is easy to do things incorrectly that may feel good in both. I will disagree that Taiji is less physically demanding. I've done both yoga and taiji, but admit I have only done yoga a handful of times. When done correctly taiji is a demanding as any other martial art, just try doing a slow controlled slap kick or drop into a pu bu (drop stance) if you think it's easy. As previously stated most schools will offer free introductory courses, and a lot of the better teachers will work with you if your situation is difficult. So it might be worth calling around to places in your area. I think either one will give you great benefits, and hope you find something that works for you!

I love the joints on that! Is it just a butt joint you've contoured, or is there a special technique for it?

Nice! I've done a little Wing Chun. It is part of our schools southern curriculum, so I've dabbled, but not jumped all the way in until I get further along in my Shaolin training. At least Wing Chun lends itself to working at home pretty well. You miss out on Chi Sau but the forms themselves are a nice workout. I think there are a few other practitioners in the monks, so ask if anything comes up!

Hi! I'm in a pretty similar boat. I practice Shaolin and Taiji; so I have set myself as a monk, but spend a fair amount of time wandering through the Druid forum as well. As I understand it the guilds are pretty flexible, so just pick a community you like and fit in with. Then feel free to associate with any other. It may not be totally correct, but it's what I do anyway, lol. I hope the solo training goes well! What type of Kung Fu do you practice?

Sorry to hear that. It sounds like the school you tried had a terrible instructor. Any good instructor will figure out how to work with you to get as close to correct as YOU are able. Glad you're still working on it at home, hopefully you can find a good instructor in time who can help you continue to improve.

Pretty middling, lol. I feel like I have set a good habit for zhan and Chinese practice. Horse stance I'm still only hitting about 2x a week. That's more than before, but still not great. I think I'll be taking the next challenge off, to keep working on my current habbits. I'm planning on being back for the one after though. 2 days between challenges has been feeling a little overwhelming. So I want to take some time, to work on my current things, before moving on to new fun! Thanks for cheeking in, it has really helped to keep me motivated

Yeah horse is brutal, and it has been a big sticking point with me for months. I always just binge practice it to get ready for testing, then slack off again. I want to make it a daily thing so when that 10min horse comes up when I test black, I don't die, lol. I haven't been under 200 since high school, so I'm excited to get back there again. My weight loss has been slowing the last couple of months, but I think with some diet tweaks, June is very doable!

Well it's been a better week than last. Still not 100% where I want things to be though. I made my goals on zhan, and chinese (even doubling up), but horse stance practice is still hit or miss. I've been discussing my current diet with my sifu quite a bit lately, so I'm working on making some changes there. I'm hoping to drop to ~200lb, maybe a touch under by June. That means I'll need to drop my last 11lbs, which I think is doable. So my next months challenge will probably end up revolving around that.

Same, I started it when I was fairly young, and it quickly became the standard by which all others are measured. I would love them to do a quality show, but the license really needs to go to someone else. Did anyone see the 'pilot' (aka trash) they aired a little while back?

Very busy. Not sure where most of that week went, lol. Goals did not go well. I managed to hit zhan every day, but only got my horse stance practice in on 2 days. Only made 1 day of Chinese practice. Work is supposed to be back to normal this week, so I'm planning on doubling up and doing 2 lessons a week. Then I can at least catch up to where I should be in the program. We're also planning on shooting some video at the kung fu school this week, so I need to dig out some time to do the editing on that, lol. No rest for the wicked, but I wouldn't have it any other way!

Well, not a bad start to this challenge. I'm managing my Zhan and horse stance nightly. The rosetta stone, I missed the first 2 days due to computer troubles (HDD was dying, ended up having to swap out for to a new SSD and reimage the machine ), but I'm up and running and only missed last night with the superbowl. I'm also managing to keep up my same goals from last month. I'm also kicking the stretching into high gear... it hurts, but will be worth it! Looking forward to another great week! æ–°å¹´å¿«ä¹XÄ«nnián kuà ilè - Happy New year!

I have tried and failed in the past, mostly due to a lack of commitment. It is super different from english, so between the sounds and the characters it is throwing. Fortunately my sifu speaks mandarin, so I'm hoping once I get the basics I can start conversing and improving from there. Fingers crossed, I've never been good with languages, but I may as well give it the old college try!

Coming off the boost of last month's challenge I thought I would make the pace change a little. I'm already getting in about as much exercise as I can, so goals this challenge will be more in the personal level up catagory. I intend to keep my diet goals from last month going, just not adding them into this officially. Goals: 1 Rosetta stone module\day (mandarin) Standing Zhan meditation at least 5min every night. working up to 30min by the end of the month. Horse stance practice\meditation every night for as many deep breaths as I can. (no time goal here, goal is just to get it more comfortable at longer times) That's it. They are few, but things I keep putting off, so time to step up to the plate. Diet and exercise, I just need to keep doing what I'm doing and make good decisions. I'm about 15lb away from my goal weight so I think I need to just let it happen there. Time to focus on some other aspects of my improvement.

Well the last week finished out strong. I'm declaring all but 2 of my goals completed. I'm still not back to 5am, but I am up between 515 and 530 every morning so that is an improvement. I also didn't get the running in, but I am getting the increased cardio in via more training, so the spirit of the goal was met, just not the goal itself. I'm looking forward to starting up my next challenge this week! Hopefully I'll have the thread started by the end of the day. I have the goals written out at least. cheers! and thanks for all the comments and support!