[Dustin]

Howdy folks,

Thursday is here. Time for another Thoughtful Thursday!

I’d like to invite all of you into the discussion this time around (you’re always invited to take part to, mind you.) These past couple weeks, I had a dreaded back spasm. Needless to say, it hindered my practice pretty substantially while I recovered from it. At one point, I tried to get things back to normal, only to realize pretty quickly that it was too soon. My spasms hit me on my lower left back, and as a result, it makes me lean in such a way that it crunches my lungs and therefore makes it harder to breathe–this is the case in regular tasks and my training. But it also gave me a moment of self-assurance.

My question to you all this week is, have you had any moments of self-assurance or self-reminders during your training this past week? This past month? Year even?

For me, it was a self-assurance that it’s okay not to go for perfection. I know that might sound odd coming from someone who has been practicing for nearly 13 years now, but sometimes, it still helps to not only hear them, but also think them.

[Dustin]

Hey there folks,

It’s Thursday again! You know the drill by now.

…speaking of which, let’s talk drills this week! Got a bit of an interesting question for all of you. For some of us here, we don’t always have access to a fellow dragon for drills. Whether you’re an online student, or you practice at home, drills are very important, I think we can all agree there. So my question this week is: how do you go about your solo drill training?

For me, I turn to my jong, Po, for a lot of my drill practice. The mook jong is the ultimate partner, and thankfully, it isn’t just for doing sections 10-100. They’re also great for drill practice and even assisting in the tan sao stretch!

[Deb McCaffery]

Hi Dustin. 🙂 A couple ways I work some drills/techniques by myself (I don’t have a wooden dummy at home, although I hope to make one)……one is when I work on some hand/arm techniques I tuck half of a pool noodle in a space on the back of my dining room chair so I have an “arm” to practice against. Another thing I do is, when working on the diagonal kicks I use the edge of my kitchen counters to kick against. The inside corner of the countertop is rounded so I am able to do Mook Jong #20 moves 13-16 and 20-23 alternating. Both my makeshift training partners sound a little goofy but they actually work pretty well!

[Dustin]

I think that’s really clever! Especially with the kitchen counter. You use what’s available to you, and that’s a good thing to have for your training!

[Dustin]

Hey folks,

Thursday is upon us once more. Time to get thinking.

I’m gonna be honest here, this has been a pretty bad week on my end. I’m not going to go into specifics, but it has, unfortunately, affected my own training. That being said, it did give me some stuff to ponder. I had a pretty good streak going with my training that unfortunately, was broken yesterday. One thing that we emphasize heavily here at The Dragon Institute is keeping consistent in your training. But sometimes you just have to listen to your body. Most of the time, our brains do what’s best for us, but sometimes, our bodies know what’s best for us, despite what our minds tell us. What good is keeping a streak alive if all it does is keep the number from going back down to 0? I started to realize that early in the week this week, and eventually I just had to give myself a day. As it so happens, that day was a rather important one for me.

We talk a lot about owning our training here. I still very firmly believe that. However, in learning to own your training, never forget that you cannot let that training own you, because when you let your training own you, you risk it overcoming and overwhelming you, and at that point your body is probably going to be screaming for a break.

In a way, taking a day for yourself is also training, because it’s training in the art of yielding and flowing, which, as I’m sure you all know, are a couple of big parts of our art here. You must yield today, so that you may flow tomorrow. Just remember to not give into the temptation of “just one more day,” because that is a dangerously slippery slope.

[Josh]

I couldn’t agree more, Dustin. This is a fantastic post and one we should all internalize. Training hard is fantastic, but some days/weeks it is really hard to get the full training sessions in. One thing I always do is SNT. This is something I do after waking up. It is never a real long or intense form (That is for later) just a way for me to wake up and get my body moving. I do this every day in the morning and before bed. There are days when I don’t get my full training in due to life, responsibilities, kids, soreness, etc. The one thing I can always fall back on is that I have done Siu Nim Tao. I should probably start logging those days where I am only doing SNT, but it feels a bit like a cop out. I feel like if I don’t get my 45 – 60 minutes in, I haven’t trained enough to log it, but your post is making me feel a bit differently and I am going to start logging those sessions where I am unable to get my full planned time in for whatever reason. I have to give myself tht grace.