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This is probably my favourite Aunkai exercise so far. It looks a lot like a standard Qigong exercise but is actually quite unique. This is a video of the exercise being performed:

There are a number of things to focus on:

• The hips can be visualised as a basin.
• The spine plugins into the basin.
• The arms are like a funnel (that pours into the basin).
• The legs form a counterpart to the arms (an inverted funnel if you like).

When coming up the visualisation is that the hands pull the body (this is a very Aunkai kind of idea). There is a focus on keeping the spine vertical all the way down. In my practice I accept that it’s not reasonable for me to keep the spine vertical the whole way down but that is the intention - you can see that Ark keeps his spine very straight and vertical the whole way through.

If you’re doing these correctly you shouldn’t be able to do more than 6 or 7 without a break. These are one of those things where the exercise becomes more difficult as you become better at doing it.

Update: there are more details here and here on the Martial Movement wiki - worth checking out if you’ve not seen it.

On Qigong

I said at the start that this is like a kind of qigong exercise. I have a habit that sometimes gets me confused and in trouble of seeing similarities between different kinds of training and different exercises - it can be very useful but also leads to me misunderstanding the intention behind some exercises. That is a kind of disclaimer because I’m going to say that this Aunkai exercise reminds me of the following qigong from Hun Yuan Tai Chi:

(Note: I’m not talking about the circles - the qigong movement starts somewhere around 40s in).

The similarities are obvious, I think, whether they are simply external or there is some similarity in the intentions behind the exercises too I’m not sure (the visualisation I learnt for the Hunyuan exercise is very different but even so…).

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Finally - a new on-topic post - it’s a shame it’s a short one today. I’ve written about Aunkai before and there is an interesting discussion thread over at Emptyflower on it at the moment.

Of course it’s Emptyflower and the quality of the discussion varies but there are some very interesting points.

In particular the apparent similarity of Tenchijin to overhead squats:

[youtube=lBEkWJ2ck-g,NOLINK]

I’ve given them a try and first up the overhead squats are definitely harder than you’d guess just by looking at them. They are not the same thing as Tenchijin but there are some similarities. It is quite plausible that adding these to your workouts would help with some of the same things that Tenchijin is aimed at helping. It is a different sensation and both exercises are very difficult (and both work your alignment).

It’s really just another exercise to keep in mind.

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My previous post on [cref 60 pushup variety] discussed several different ideas for making pushups more interesting. I’m not really sure that these count as pushups but they’re quite an interesting exercise (that has pushup in the name):

[youtube=X2BeMv3-vOw,NOLINK]

Apparently these are very good for your shoulders - not just to make you stronger but also healthier. Worth giving a go…

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Pushups are a fantastic exercise that builds strength that is useful and functional. Unfortunately pushups can be deadly boring. I would go further - I hate pushups… I see them as a really valuable exercise but one that I detest actually performing. I can’t escape that they’re good for me - so I’ve found some ways to make them more enjoyable, more challenging and better for you.

What I’ve found to make doing pushups much more enjoyable is to do different variations - doing more difficult variations means I can do less reps too as well as making the exercise itself more enjoyable. I have no idea, by the way, why I find pushups so unpleasant whereas squat based exercises I like. Anyway - I’ve stumbled on Hindu pushups as my least hated pushup but there are some others that I do that I quite like.

Hindu Pushups

This has a few variations that I really like:

Side to Side Pushups

Something a bit different, I really like this one:

Planche

This is just impressive as hell. I can’t do these but I’m working up to them there are some good tutorials on youtube as to how to build up to this (interesting note most planche tutorials show the hands pointing backwards towards your feet not sure it’s very signficant but it’s interesting):

Update - Spiderman Pushups

I came across these by accident just after writing the above. Well these are nice - I still prefer Hindu Pushups - they’re a little easy but they work some flexibility which is nice. Same for the spiderman lunges, my only gripe there is that they’re a little easy but still not a bad exercise that I can see being good as a warm up or cool down.

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Welcome to my new website and blog. This is a personal website and blog that focuses on Chinese internal martial arts. I am in no way particularly good at these things and I’m really just a beginner with a few years experience. I see this blog as trying to meet two needs:

• provide some useful info for people starting out without getting too technical
• somewhere for me to write out some thoughts as I progress in my training

I’m not particularly experienced and compared to the info out there by some truly amazing teachers this is not nearly as profound and I’m not trying to be that. There is excellent information out there by authors and teachers with more than 10 times my experience… I’m hoping to provide some interesting thoughts that might be interesting to others that don’t have lots of experience.

There is not a lot here just yet so while I’m putting things together the [cref 6 training material] and about page might be worth checking out. All this is just getting started - please check back as I’ll be putting a lot more up here as I get a change to write it.

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