A new year and lots of new opportunities. 2024 is an exciting year and I have a brain full of ideas to improve the classes, myself and most importantly our fantastic group of students at Jintou martial arts.
The world at the moment is a frustrating and chaotic place... or is it just full of different opportunities? As humans our programmed mindset is how we view the world..... and that is all it is, programming. In fact experts estimate that our nervous systems, through our five senses, are bombarded by 2 million bits of data each second of the day. We can only digest 126 bits of that data, the rest is deleted, distorted and generalised. In effect, a substantial chunk of what we believe we see is actually a generalised blend of old bits of data and is distorted by our programming. The thing is as human beings we have known for thousands of years that the way to happiness is to break our programming, look deeply at and contemplate ourselves and the world we live in. So while on a train, well over a year ago now, I started to list some of the ideas that had stuck with me over the last 30 years of martial arts and meditation and I recently stumbled across it. The list isn't exhaustive and it's purposefully vague and contradictory and can have several meanings, some of it can seem simple or obvious but simple and obvious is often overlooked, some ideas are things to do and some are things to contemplate, not just think about but swill around in your mind and observe where your thoughts take you. Evolve and live a happy healthy life. 1. Break your programming and understand your glitches. 2. Realise you aren’t as bad as you think you are. 3. Realise you aren’t as good as you think you are. 4. In other words don’t take yourself too seriously. 5. Meditate, deeply (this will help with number 1 and plenty others.) 6. Breathe, study the different ways to breathe and how they affect your physiology and psychology. 7. Do good and do your best. 8. Understand that none of it really matters, the mountains and trees were here long before us and they will be here long after we are forgotten…. Hopefully. 9. Don’t let external things affect you negatively. 10. Don’t fret and worry over things that are out of your control. 11. Exercise daily, get out in nature. 12. No matter what you do some people will choose not to believe in you, keep going. 13. Have a flexible mind and body. 14. Adaption equals survival. 15. Develop a strong, kind, giving and growth oriented mindset. 16. Timing is very important. 17. Have fun. 18. Treat each day as a new start. 19. Be positive. 20. Allow yourself to break a little sometimes. 21. Look for solutions and see problems as fun challenges. 22. Be easy-going. 23. Be indignant. 24. Don’t judge. Know that your view of the world is yours, don’t expect others to have the same. 25. Learn everything you can. 26. Discover a love of the simple things. 27. Be curious about everything (great for learning potential). 28. Don’t look for quick wins anything worth while takes time. 29. The journey is more important than the destination (cliched but true). 30. Leave one goal unfinished. 31. It will never be perfect, or be the perfect time. 32. Learn from successful people. 33. You are a product of everyone you have ever met, thank them. 34. Blame never ends, let it go. In fact let it all go…. Really let it go…. I mean everything… 35. Let go…. 36. Now is perfect. 37. Find joy in repetition. 38. Have less stuff. 39. Discover the flow state. 40. Smile.
A brief anatomy of the horse stance A fundamental part of traditional training the horse riding stance (Ma Bu in Chinese) is a popular yet painful exercise. Here we are going to look at the anatomy of Ma Bu and some of the benefits it produces. Ma Bu is an Isometric exercise in which the muscles are contracted and held in a static position, what is great about Ma Bu though is that it performs two tasks simultaneously; it is both isometric strength training for the quads and glutes and isometric stretching for the inner thigh. Muscles stretched: Adductor longus, Adductor brevis, Adductor magus. Gracilis, Pectineus, quadratus femoris Isometric stretching can be uncomfortable, but holding tension in the muscles while they are lengthened will increase flexibility and improve the strength of the muscle fibers. By pushing out the knees we will stretch the muscles of the inner thigh which are used to adduct the leg (pull it towards the centre of the body,) if you want to increase your hip flexibility, kicking range or do the box splits, isometric training of the adductors is of substantial help. Muscles Working: Quadriceps femoris (rectus femoris, vastus lateralis, vastus intermedius, vastus medialis,) Gluteus maximus (used to outwardly rotate the legs.) The quads and glutes are some of the largest muscles in the body and used for things such as running, jumping and kicking. Physical and mental endurance: Holding Ma Bu for even two minutes is tough, (five minutes is great, going beyond this is said to have little impact on strength gains,) but by holding this high intensity position we are improving our muscular endurance and lactic threshold. Importantly it isn’t the body that gives out first for a majority of people it’s the mind, we just give up. Holding through the pain when you really want to quit will increase your mental endurance and discipline. Ankles knees and hips: Because we are talking about a low horse stance with the feet facing forwards, we will increase the tension on the tendons and ligaments of the hips, knees and ankles, this is fantastic for drawing blood to these areas increasing their strength and health. Ma Bu may be limited by its static training position when most of our training requires us to move, but it provides some unique benefits and can quite easily be added to your training regime if you have a few minutes spare, which let’s face it we all do at some point.