Monday, April 27

I couldn't sleep so I got up early to finish a couple of stories. That left me plenty of time for a pretty hardcore workout as soon as I came home from taking my son to school.

My carport kwoon looks pretty good, but I do need to make some repairs and get other things cleaned up. It would have been easy for me to postpone my workout while I cleaned off those rubber pads for the floor, or finished repairing my leg stretcher. I got of to a good start with it on Friday, cutting plywood to replace the seat and the leg braces, and sanding off the rust and old paint.

Hell! I'll do anything to avoid my full-body stretch routine. It's probably the most necessary and the most boring part of my training schedule. But I did it anyway, knowing full well that it is the main thing keeping me from being completely stiffened up, especially my neck and back.

Afterward, I settled into a good 30-minute run of the Siu Lam Tao form, the first set of Wing Chun Kung Fu. It's not pretty, but doing a slow superset of SLT will take a lot out of you, mentally and physically.

It did me good. My legs weren't hurting as bad as I expected. In fact, I felt all kinds of new energy just surging to get out. I settled into some sets with the ab wheel and some claw pushups, alternating between runs of the wooden dummy set and sets of individual techniques on the dummy.

Following the dummy work, I did a set of 108 bag catches, throwing a canvas bag filled with 20 pounds of beebees into the air and catching it with the other hand. I closed with some standard crunches.

I should have returned to work as soon as I was done with that, but I couldn't resist doing a little work on the stretch rack. It's now completely sanded, the boards are cut and by this time next week, I'll be back to doing a piss-poor immitation of Bill "Superfoot" Wallace.