How did they survive to train for 6-8h a day?

[Umagaur]

I have been training Hung gar for some years and as this summer was free from everything so to speak I decided to train alittle more then usually.
So I planned to practise for ruffly 4h a day. 2h before noon and 2h after.
I choose to train the lin gong in the morning with added amount of kicks and punches. In the afternoon I trained sets and combos.
After 12 days with two resting days each 4th day my body was exhausted.
And soon after my knee went bad. I understand that I propably went over my head but it raised a question. How do you train every day for hours on end and still have a body to live with when you get old? (or even the next day) I'm told hung gar is for life not that it gives you a broken body.

I have never had the opportunity to practise for more then a couple of days a week due to work. Now that is different and I feel alittle lost. Am I not going to be able to train each day? I don't want injuries or going back in my progress by doing things that break down instead of build up my body.

So can any one enlighten me on how to do this?

Thanks,

[laukarfei]

training 8 hours a day is no big deal but no 1 style shouldnt need that much training, you time could be better spent if your trying to develope your fighting ability, or even if its fitness youd be better off doing other activities

if your training by yourself and your becoming injured your definately doing something wrong. but if your knee just "hurts" thats not an injury lolo but its a sign your not doing something right

and another thing, you have to break down the body before you can build it up, thats pretty much how it works. and no matter how good you get some days you will just feel like shit, u just gotta keep going

check out this site http://rosstraining.com/blog/

[ironpalm]

[Harutomo]

[Daifong]

[Daifong]

6-8 hours a day?

Who trains like that?

What could your possible objective be, to want to even try to train like that?

Unless you've seen it yourself, I wouldn't believe it. Unless somebody qualified is coaching, why try to put yourself through it?

What you are describing is equivalent to a military basic training/ Olympic-level atheletic regimen timeframe...

No specific program is no specific program, and overtraining is overtraining, period. We're lucky the human body burns out from doing too much too soon, before really starting to cause ourselves some damage...

Why not just try defining some reasonable goals, pacing yourself, and focusing on consistency?



Best,

Michael

[Asmo]

I think for shorter periods training 6 hours a day or so is doable. On my visit to Pavel for example I did 3 sessions of about 2 hours each a day. That was a week and halfway I had a day "off". I was exhausted afterwards though.

On my visits to Franky I generally train less but still after 4-5 days I'm done. My head is full and nothing fits in there anymore...

I cant imagine doing that for even longer periods...

That said, when I was younger (i'm not "old" now, but older, 39) I was able to train lots more as I recovered much faster. Age defenitally plays a major factor. Right now with a second kid being 8 weeks keeping you awake its hard to get in a single session each day even, haha.

[Frank Bolte]

.....

[PM]

train smarter, not more. more is not better.

Harumoto - excellent post!

[Itinerant_Phenomenologist]

How do you people have so much time to train? Makes me borderline envious. I'm lucky to get 2.5 hours a day much less 4 or 8.

But agreed that it is the quality of the training that matters of the quantity (as is the case for most things). The training, especially when time is premium, must always focus on exactly what it is you want to accomplish. Thus a person who is training to fight need not waste time running through the forms over and over again, and the person who is training with focus on performance competition need not waste too much time skipping rope and working on the heavy bag. However, if it's overall fitness you want, then you can afford to be more diffuse with the time and topic of choice for training.

Personally, given the premium amount of time I have (as I said 2hrs is lucky), I only have the luxury to train in 1hr blocks. The first hour I spend 10min stretching and general warm up. 20min stance drills. Last 30min of first hour I go through Gung Ji Fook Fu, Fu Hok and Tit Sin to simply keep in practice and maintain integrity of my knowledge.

Second hour I forgo the stretching because typically it's at the end of the day after a full days worth of stuff so I'm generally fairly loose, as opposed to just waking up and doing my first hour in the morning. So first 30min is purely lin gung (typically focus on kiu sau exercises coupled with stance drills). Last 30min devoted to technique drills.

If I have that extra half an hour (those are the super lucky days), then I devote that final segment of time to maintaining proficiency with staff and spear.

But yeah... 4hrs... 8hrs... you people make me fairly envious of that much time. Especially now since I will be having less time than before with law school starting next month. I'll flex the mental muscle but the body will slowly wither into something more fitting of the 'scholar'.

[Harutomo]

PM: I am looking forward to see LGHK Sanda Team in the ring. I thing they are pretty different every month and going to kick some ass in September?

[PM]

well, we are still negotiating with one of the MMA/Muay Thai Association... meanwhile i am arranging as many sparring sessions with different martial artists (Muay Thai, Wingcheun, CLF, xingyi... ) as possible, devising a specialised strength and conditioning program for the LGHK Saan Da Team, incorporating some basic ground game from MMA and re-modelling the school (kicking poles, more heavy bags etc.). most of the guys are on ther holidays, so i suppose beginning of 2011 is more realistic. i want to make sure we are ready well, every month a see a progress, and that is good

[vaulander]

Two hours Lin Gung every day, probably heavy on the legs in stances, yes? You know bodybuilders circulate their training areas, so one day legs, next day arms, after that back and belly, etc? That way a particular section or muscle group has time to replenish and heal itself.
Like my overmuscled testosterone drenched friend keeps telling me, let the muscles rest, doing curls every day will break them down, not build them up.
Either do things in moderation every day, quitting when the 'burn' first shows up, or focus on one aspect a day, like serious horse stance one day, something else (not leg related) next day, and cycle through.
As others here have said, going from a moderate training regimen to a heavy one without buildup doesn't work too well either. That's like a newbie going into a gym and burning out on every machine there the first day cuz he finally got a membership.
V.

[PM]

curls? machines? is anybody still doing stuff like this?

[Umagaur]

First of all thanks for all the input.

I have a regular training at 1,5 h, 3-4 times a week so this was a step up but I had a plan and the first day got to decide how much and how hard I would pace the training. I had planned for much more training topics then it actually became. Last 3 days I had a slow pace with low impact.

Ironpalm: Good idea. I did not mix the hard and soft. It was mostly hard all the way.':lol:'

Part of my question was also how to endure that kind of hard regime. Doesn't the shaolin monks do 6-8h a day? or did? Then how do/did they last?

I'd like to train 2h a day in the future. And it seems some of you guys do it.

Asmo seems to have been there doing lots of hours =). This was an experiment and meant to last only 7-14 day.

Vaulander: How do you use the bodybuilder training for us? I mean you can't do sets without the legs. Can't fight or do do lin gong without legs. If you train the sword for an hour your shoulders will propobly protest if you do kiu saos next day with rings on.

In some book about massage it said that elite training needs stretching and massage to be able to requperate from day to day. That I had forgot.
Could it be so simple that if I had taken more care of my body with some more stretching and added massage it would have worked? (If I just didn't overdo it)