I’m trying to improve the strength and flexibility in my legs. I go to the gym every lunch time and Monday, Wednesday and Friday I do cardio exercises (the stair machine at the moment) followed by leg stretches. I spend 15 minutes on the cardio and then around 10 minutes on the stretching. It’s nothing intense, in fact it’s quite a tame routine.

Leg Exercise Torture

A few times at my Wing Chun class the teacher has made us do a gruelling leg work out. This isn’t sifu, this is some other senior who has some kind of compulsive disorder regarding leg torture! He administers the pain in the following ways:

• Gets us to do siu lim tau on one leg. So you stand on one leg with the other raised with thigh parallel to ground while tan/fook sau goes out and then swap legs when you change to jum sau/wu sau. Nasty.
• Stand on one leg with the other raised so that thigh is parallel to floor. Rotate the foot clockwise and then anticlockwise for an eternity. Then rotate the shin in the same fashion for another eternity. Then stretch the whole leg out so that it’s straight. This lasts a bit longer, like an aeon actually.
• A vicious one this: face a pillar and raise your knee until thigh horizontal again or even pointing up a bit and lower leg just pointing down. Extend your leg so that the heel touches the pillar (foot is maybe 45 degrees to the vertical). This is the painful bit. Keep the leg in that position but relax the foot so that the heel moves away from the pillar and then hit the pillar again with the heel. The ball/arch of the foot maintains contact while the heel hits the pillar repeatedly. All this with the leg raised quite high (for me anyway).

He’s fair about it though as he leads the exercise and sets a fine example as he is so supple.

My New Lege Exrecise Routine

These exercises really hurt. But… they hurt because I don’t do any exercise at home or in the gym. So I’ve decided to rectify this by stepping up (ok – by starting) some strength/flexibility training for my legs. It’s laughable at the moment: I stretch as usual (see above) but then I balance on one leg whilst holding out my other leg for a count of 10. The goal is to hold the leg stretched out horizontally but all I can manage at the moment is some patheic angle to the ground!

Jet Lis’s Intensive Workout

Now, this is an inspirational bit of footage. Look at Jet Li around the 10 second mark. That’s the kind of strength and control I want.