ILC on Tour in Poland Sept. 19th-28th
 

This morning I returned home from a 10-day trip to Poland where I trained with Sifu and a small core group of students from New York, Vienna and Belarus in the cities of Poznan, Gniezno and Warsaw. When not attending the weekend seminars, we spent many hours training at our hotel and at our host's apartment in Warsaw, working on refining the forms, mastering the 15 basic exercises, spinning and discussing ILC philosophy and life in general. It was fun but exhausting. One of my recurring thoughts was "When do these guys ever sleep?"

Sifu was warmly welcomed by enthusiastic groups at the seminars in Poznan and Warsaw. About 25 people attended the seminar in Poznan (their second seminar this year), and about 35 in Warsaw, drawn from a larger Taiji group of about 200 people. In each city, women accounted for about 30% of all participants - a far higher percentage than in the U.S. or Western Europe.

On a side note, maybe a quarter of the male participants had shaved heads, which seemed unusual to me, but I was told that in Poland it is relatively common for martial arts enthusiasts to shave their heads.

After the weekend seminar in Poznan, we went to the city of Gniezno, where we met with the mayor of the city and the head of the local cultural center, which was celebrating a week of "Chinese Culture". Sifu held a short training session at the cultural center, where we were joined by the mayor, who practices Taiji and Wing Chun, and who seemed to enjoyed doing some sticky hands training and spinning with us. The mayor also treated us afterwards to a meal at a local restaurant.

We were asked to make a short presention of ILC to the audience at the cultural center, so Sifu explained some of the concepts behind ILC, performed the Butterfly Form, and gave a demonstration of how some of the ideas from spinning hands can be used for self-defense purposes. Our host in Poznan, Piotr, displayed a sword form and the first form "yilu" from Chen-style Taijiquan. On of the highlights of the presentation was when Sifu asked his youngest student, a sturdy 29 year-old, to simulate an attack on his oldest student (aged in his mid-sixties), who was easily able to fend off the attack.

While not conducting seminars, we often visited the hosts in their homes, and worked with them in small groups to refine and improve everyone's understanding of ILC. Of of Sifu's memorable quotes in this regard was that "secrets protect themselves". By this he meant that even if something is explained to students openly and directly, mastery is only possible through dedication and hard work.

During one private training session with our host Mariusz in Warsaw, somebody stumbled over Ashe's latest 21 Form posted on YouTube. We all stopped training and crowded around the computer to watch Ashe perform the form. Afterwards Sifu nodded and smiled and said "Not bad!". Sifu also mentioned that it takes guts to post videos of one's form on www.iliqchuan.org or YouTube, but that by opening oneself to criticism, one can actually make even more progress.

By about the 8th day of training, I felt a bit tired and discouraged. I later realized that I had been comparing my own (slow) progress to that of the (faster) progress shown by other members of the core group. In an attempt to keep up with them I would tense up, and training, which had been fun up to that point, became a chore. Once I realized I had fallen into the trap of comparing myself to others, I forced myself to focus on my own development and not make comparisons. This helped to lighten my mood and training became fun again.

Our Polish hosts were very gracious, and took great pains to arrange comfortable hotel arrangements for us, took us to meals at various restaurants throughout the city and even hosted a barbecue for us after the final day of training before our mad dash to the train station. Warsaw was clean and vibrant with many new shops and restaurants.

The level of enthusiasm in Poland for ILC was so high that they plan to introduce a weekly ILC class in Warsaw, and also invited Sifu to return next year for additional seminars in Poznan and Warsaw.

Peter
ILC/SL2
Vienna (Austria) Study Group

thanks so much for taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences with us here on the forum!

i've definitely had my ups and down with training as well, from injuries to just being downright discouraged. i know many times i've questioned myself on whether or not i could even make anymore progress as a distance student, or whether or not i'd just reached my possible potential and just couldn't go any further, but i just seem to truly love the art, and so always come back for more and it always pays off.

who was there from new york?

Richard came with the Sifu from New York.

Hi Peter!
Very quickly, now my turn in russian.
We all have so many fun when you was around :)
Can you put on the forum your books about ILC forms :)

Hey Dimitri,

It was a pleasure training with you in Poland. It's amazing how quickly you are able to learn things. Next year you have to bring your guitar.

Ashe wrote:
What kind of injuries - training related, or from accidents in general? It's hard to imagine being injured while training the 15 basic exercises or simple spinning.

Peter

more from sparring and conditioning. i nearly blew my knee out this summer running stairs to get ready for my fight in Maryland.

Hey Ashe,

That sounds very unpleasant. I hope your knee is better now.

At what point do you generally take a break from training when you have injuries or symptoms of exhaustion (from overtraining)? I find that most people, myself included, have a tendency to overdo it to try to "work through" the pain.

I find I am relatively injury free when I focus on regular training and on simply maintaining my level of fitness. As soon as I try to BOOST my fitness level, by running more, or faster, or by lifting heavier weights, etc., I invariably suffer some kind of injury. It then takes a long time just to return to the level of fitness I enjoyed before the injury.

Thus I am increasingly more focused on maintaining my level of fitness, rather than trying to 'improve' it.

Peter

Hi Peter,

Thanks for sharing your recent ILC experiences with us. I enjoyed reading your post. It's good to hear about ILC on the other side of the pond. :)

In regards to maintaining vs improving fitness, I personally think it's important to be improving fitness. I approach it like I approach any training. You should be constantly striving to improve, but realize that it's a slow and steady improvement with occasional jumps in advancement. The injuries and setbacks happen when you push too hard and too fast.

Johnny

it depends. if it's just at some random point in the year, then taking an extra day off is no problem, but in the case of training for a fight, it's a different story since you have a fixed date. if you take an extra day off, the fight day doesn't move any further out.

so if you only have, say, 84 training days to prepare, taking extra days off can really start to add up to a significant percentage of you total available training days.

the problem is further compounded by the issue of volume. in other words, you NEED to complete a certain amount of work at each training session in order to achieve a certain level of preparedness.

for instance, in the case of fighting in a tournament like the Kuoshu or Taiji Legacy, if you want to make it all the way to the top spot, you may have to fight three or four times, and in order to be truly prepared you have to assume that each fight will go the full three rounds, which means that by the end of your training cycle you need to be able to complete 9-12 rounds.

so for instance, i was running a lot of stairs as part of my conditioning routine, and at 32 and being 230 pounds, it's a lot of abuse on my knees to run that many circuits of stairs, but due to various conditions, it happened to be the best method i had available to me at the time, so i just had to deal with it and hope that my knee didn't disintegrate.