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.