The last two weeks have been horrendous for training, with last week being especially bad. Problems at work have meant that instead of being in the gym doing Wing Chun at 7am, I've actually been in the office working at that time.  And this is working without a break until 6pm. I've only managed one class per week, which I suppose isn't too bad, but I really felt the absence of the morning sessions.

However, the crisis is over (for now) and I was back in the gym this morning.

More Cardio!

With my routine getting back to normal again, I've decided to change the focus of my training. Instead of dedicating my gym time exclusively to Wing Chun, as I have been doing for the last 5 months, I'm going to compromise and include some "proper exercise" too. My Wing Chun training doesn't include any aerobic exercise and I think that that's an important component to consider. My job is sedentary in the extreme and so I need a structured approach to getting aerobic exercise, otherwise I just won't get any. Therefore, in the 90 minutes or so I have in the gym before work, I'm going to balance things out by reducing my Wing Chun time and increasing (err... starting...) my cardio time.

This morning, for example, I did the following:

• 5 minutes walking on the treadmill as a warmup
• 15 minutes on the stair machine for aerobic exercise
• 5 minutes doing pressups and situps for brick-like pectorals
• 20 minutes siu lim tau

For the sake of vanity, I thought I'd do something about getting my pecs back, hence the pressups! Well, the holidays are coming, after all...

Provisional Training Timetable

Here are my thoughts on how I'm going to split my Wing Chun training with my conventional gym training. Monday, Wednesday and Friday will be my cardio days, consisting of routines similar to that outlined above. As I get fitter, I'll increase the stair machine time (or time spent on a similar aerobic machine). Tuesday and Thursday will be weights days. Yay!

The cardio exercise will be easier to combine with the Wing Chun because after 20 minutes of earobic exercise I'm merely out of breathe. In contrast, after a hard weight training session, my muscles are quivering like jelly and thoroughly exhausted. Imagine holding out your tan sau still after you've wreaked havoc on your biceps doing curls! This means that whatever Wing Chun I do on the weights days must come before the weight training. No problem.

Because I'm only doing two days of weight training, I'm going to do full body workouts on those days. Otherwise I'll be training a particular body part only once per week.

As we're already one third of the way into this year, I thought I'd do a progress report on my training. Well, I've not reached the lofty heights of a consistent 10 hours a week that I was aiming for, but I'm averaging more hours than my lazy alter ego managed last year. It seems I'm doing on average around 6 hours a week, which is roughly one hour a day. There's two ways I can look at this. Being a perfectionist I can berate myself and say it's nowhere near enough, and certainly not as much as I could easily do. But also being a postive person, I can see the value of setting targets that you don't hit. If setting a target of 10 hours means that although I don't reach it, I'm still doing 3 times as much as I was before, how can I complain?

The Cardio Connection

One way I am changing my training routine is by adding some cardio exercise. My wing chun training doesn't give me enough aerobic exercise and I know I need it. I've found a way to integrate some into my training so that it actually helps the Wing Chun aspect. I thought I would start doing two long siu lim tau sessions per week (maybe 30 minute ones). The problem is, I really need to be warmed up for them or injuries prevail. So, in order to both warm up and get my aerobic exercise I'm going to precede my long siu lim taus with maybe 20 - 25 minutes of cardio work. Win win.

Also, I like having the muscle tone I used to have when I weight trained so I've started doing a mere 5 minutes of pressups and situps at the end of my Wing Chun training. Just as a compromise. Without breaks in between I do 5 pressups, 5 situps, 10 pressups, 10 situps, 15 pressups, 15 situps. I then have a little break to avoid passing out before doing 20 pressups and 20 situps. It's not much for now (certainly not much compared to what I used to do), but I'll aim to keep increasing that last pressup/situp cycle.