My current wing chun training regime requires me to do my training before work just to be able to get an hour in every day. I get up at 6am and start training at 6:40 in my gym. Training so early has its pitfalls, so I thought I would list them here and also list my solutions to problems I’ve encountered.

Preparation Is The Key

To avoid stumbling around the house half asleep looking for stuff I need to take to the gym, I pack everything the night before. This includes:

• gym clothes laid out
• gym bag filled and ready to go
• packed lunch
• carb booster bar for pre-breakfast
• water bottle

Then all I have to do in the morning is brush my teeth, put my clothes on and go. In fact thinking about it, if I sleep in my clothes in my car, all I have to do is wake up and drive! Necessity is the mother of invention. Being ultra prepared in this way has the added benefit that I have no time to talk myself out of training. No decisions need to be made, everything is ready. Clothes on, brrrm brrrm.

No Energy

Because of the food famine we endure when we sleep through the night (the way I made it sound like a crisis comes from my earstwhile interest in body building, where any interruption in feeding is deemed an emergency!), our energy stores run dry quickly in the morning. For that reason, I think we should eat at least something before an early morning session. The problem is, if you eat too much or you eat the wrong food, you’ll feel sick when you exert yourself. Enter the chocolate chip oat bar. This isn’t the kind of food I normally eat, but it’s small and light and delivers a lot of carbs quickly. Because it’s processed food, my theory is that its glycemic index is high and the carbs will be absorbed and ready to use more quickly. For that reason I’m willing to eat this otherwise crappy food and put up with any sugar crashes that hit me. Porridge is my breakfast of choice but oats take longer to digest and I only have 40 minutes between digestion and action. Digestion to action: wow, this is the James Bond diet!

Stiff Myscles

I can barely move when I get out of bed because my muscles are so stiff. Then I have 30 minutes of more inaction while I drive to the gym near where I work. When I walk through those gym doors, my body is still asleep. To immediately jump into any vigorous exercise, or even Siu Lim Tau, whilst my muscles are so cold and stiff would be madness. For this reason, I take the warm up period very seriously. Personally, I like to walk on the treadmill for 5 minutes, starting at 5.2 Km/h and increasing the speed by 0.2 every minute. Then I do a low intensity 5 minute warm up comprising gentle stretches. After that comes a slightly higher intensity warm up that consists of different kinds of swinging kicks. This warm up takes around 15 minutes in total, and although I’m still coldish relative to my body’s state later on in the day, I’m just warm enough to start training (gingerly) with less risk of injury.

Manipulate The Sequence Of Exercises

Even after that 15 minute warm up, I’m still nervous about attempting something strenuous like Siu Lim Tau. Siu Lim Tau puts enormous stress on your legs and shoulders if you do it properly and for the length of time I like to do it for, so for this reason I like to do Tsum Kiu first. Tsum Kiu is not as pysically demanding as Siu Lim Tau and I find that doing it at normal speed is good for warming up the body. After 15 minutes of doing Tsum Kiu, I’m pretty much ready for doing anything.

Think About Rehydration

If you’re training for an hour, you really should drink during that time. There is a water fountain in my gym, but to use it I’d need to leave my cosy little room, walk past all the other gym-goers on their assorted machines, get a drink and walk back. Unnecessary interruption! Instead I just take a bottle of water into my training room with me and save on those many walks to the fountain. I combine breaks between exercises with taking sips of water, texting my girlfriend and sitting in horse stance. Time is money, after all.

And Balance Is Buggered

I don’t know about you, but this early in the morning my balance is buggered. Some of the exercises I do involve me standing on one leg, or turning (as in Tsum Kiu) and invariably I fall out of the stance like it’s drunken monkey style and not wing chun. Actually, I look more like this guy when he gets up off the floor. I get really annoyed with myself and sometimes punch myself in the head when my balance goes but I know it’s important to just accept the fact that your balance isn’t so good when you’re still half asleep. Threatening myself with an iron bar just seems to make it worse, so I’m trying to be a little calmer about things.