Sunday Group Practice

Practical Method Toronto Sunday Group practices at Oriental Centre from 8:00 am to 10:30 am. Today, we focused on not moving the knee.

1. 1-2-3 stepping exercise: push out with left heel (body weight stay on right leg), shift your body forward until the left knee is on top of the left heel, pull the right foot forward closer to the left foot without moving the left knee at all. Repeat with right foot forward, and continue to alternate between left and right feet.
2. Hold onto a bar with the left knee on top of the left heel. Without changing the shape of the arm or moving your left knee forward, pull up the right foot with the ball of the right foot touching the ground all the time. Repeat with right foot forward.
3. Practice yilu with focus on which knee shouldn't be moving in each step of each move.

Why do we need to practice this?
In push hands, we often need to adjust our leg positions, or get closer to your opponent without him detecting our movement. We want to pull ourselves up, and not push ourselves up.

100-yilu-in-a-single-day challenge

After hearing Chen Xu and Ling Zili finished 170 yilus in a single day on June 29, 2014, I was inspired to challenge myself to do 50 yilus in a day myself the next day. I completed the challenged with 52 yilus. This is my personal best at this time.

I lost 2 pounds after the challenge, and my kua was aching, The muscles behind my right leg were quite tight, but I had always had tighter muscles there compared to the left leg. Of course, I felt tired, but actually not too bad. My time:
07:50 - 8:45: 7 yilus (55 mins) - 7 mins 51 secs per yilu
Breakfast
10:10 - 12:46: 18 yilus (2 hours 36 mins) - 8 mins 40 secs per yilu
Lunch
13:37 - 15:48: 15 yilus (2 hours 11 mins) - 8 mins 44 secs per yilu
Break
16:15 - 17:45: 10 yilus (1 hour 30 mins) - 9 mins per yilu
Dinner
19:30 - 19:45: 2 yilus (15 mins) - 7 mins 30 mins per yilu

Chen Xu and Ling Zili's time:
06:30 - 11:50 80 yilus (5 hours 20 mins) - 4 mins per yilu
Lunch
12:30 - 18:30: 70 yilus (6 hours) - 5 mins 9 secs per yilu
Dinner
19:50 - 21:30: 20 yilus (1 hours 40 mins) - 5 mins per yilu
These are very, very fast yilus.

In the Chinese QQ group, Master Chen Zhonghua gave some history about the 100-yilu-in-a-single-day challenge in Practical Method:
When Master Chen Zhonghua went back to China in 1991 to visit Grandmaster Hong Junsheng, one day, he and his senior taiji brother Yi Wei (以为) discussed with Grandmaster Hong Junsheng about how many times of yilus should be practiced. Grandmaster Hong Junsheng asked Master Chen Zhonghua how many he practiced, Master Chen Zhonghua replied with 7 yilus. Grandmaster Hong Junsheng said 7 was too few. The senior taiji brother asked Grandmaster Hong Junsheng how many he was practicing before. Grandmaster Hong Junsheng said not fewer than 20 when he was still a student, and it was also the same with Grandmaster Chen Fake. When the senior taiji brother asked how many one should practice per day, Grandmaster Hong Junsheng didn't answer directly, and but said the key was perseverance. He then said that he heard Grandmaster Chen Fake used to practice 100 yilus a day, and asked if that was real. Grandmaster Hong Junsheng again didn't answer directly, but asked the senior taiji brother and Master Chen Zhonghua why they didn't give it a try. Not sure if the senior taiji brother even tried it, Master Chen Zhonghua didn't try it until 10 years later in 2001, which was the year when Master Chen Zhonghua resigned from his day job, and started teaching taiji professionally. Since then, he started asking his full time students in the last month of a 3-month training program to challenge themselves to do 100 yilus in a single day. From 2001 to 2005, he took the challenge with his students every time. Note that Practical Method did not require students to do a certain number of yilus per day. When the students passed the mark of 100 yilus in a day, there was a lot of negative comments about it. Others assumed it was about asking students to do 100 yilus every day, and would simply say that it would be bad for the students. The following are the people who have made it so far:
Carl Lindberg - 103 yilus
John Dahms: 103 yilus
Todd Elihu:104 yilus
Dave Dahms: 114 yilus
Steve Chan - 124 yilus (and he has gone over 100 multiple times)
Brennan Toh - 150 yilus
Chen Xu - 170 yilus
Ling Zili - 170 yilus

How to handle the teacher's teaching?

十年之内，对老师的东西要坚信不疑，一字不能差。
十年之后，要对老师的东西全部重新确认。一字不漏。

For the first 10 years, believe everything the teacher says without any doubt, with no changes to any word.
Beyond the first 10 years, verify everything the teacher says without missing any word.

20 yilus a day for 20 years

Master Chen Zhonghua says if you want the real gongfu, you will need to give up something. To have real change, you will need to find someone who you can't defeat no matter what you do today. 20 yilus a day for 20 years are also needed to get real taiji.

If you don't understand something, write it down in your notebook

Master Chen Zhonghua: "If you don't understand something, write it down in your notebook." (Don't just remember it in your head, or say that you will not forget it, literally write it down)

Notes for Every Move Must Be Adjusted

http://practicalmethod.com/2014/06/every-move-must-be-adjusted/

Notes:

1. Every right move we make, we will make a wrong move as well. We need to strive to conceal or eliminate the wrong move.
2. 5 parts must disappear: wrist (same as ankle), elbow, shoulder, kua, knee.
3. Open one door, close it behind before opening another one. (I see sequencing in this description of actions).
4. Train enough to the point where you can do what you are supposed to do automatically. Training means following a procedure repeatly until you get it. No need to think about why you are following that procedure. When you can do it, you will know why you did it the way you did it.

Notes for Todd Elihu and Wu Shaozhi Testing Energy Online Video

http://practicalmethod.com/2014/06/todd-elihu-and-wu-shaozhi-testing-energy-online-video-purchase/

Notes:

1. If you don't know how to squeeze (ji), you cannot start, and are just fighting (i.e. not doing taiji).
2. By comparing how Master Chen Zhonghua did the squeeze himself to how the two students did it, I can see the difference between the correct and not-so-correct ways, and hopefully in due time, I can get closer to the ideal. 
3. Take note of Master Chen Zhonghua's commentary while the two students were trying the squeeze action. It is important to associate what he said to what was happening at the time, so one can start to recognize the deficiency in one own's action during training. The ability to recognize the issue paves the path to a higher level.