Bob wrote:In the same way you would treat running, swimming etc. etc.. For example, using running to keep fit would not necessitate training for a marathon or say for hurdles (which I did a billion years ago). I don't separate out any of the above you listed.
I am more interested in one's approach to a routine that emphasized health i.e. Musculoskeletal fitness, Mind/body, and/or Qi/tcm.
Then it's fitness you want. There are three basic components of fitness: strength, aerobic cardio,and anaerobic cardio.
My general advice would be to not overtrain santi or the five fists. The variety that they offer is not enough and if you train them seriously everyday, you will likely overtrain them (possible tendonitis) without getting much in the way of fitness results. you will also adapt to them fairly quickly meaning you get less fitness over time. This is noticed by checking your heart rate.
The 12 animals and the forms are better. Strength training is hard with MA but dragon done with deep stances and the jumping kick comes to mind. I would do the animals in wide, long stances and emphasize stretching the techniques out to build power in the body. for strength, i don't like long pole exercises since they tend to be overdone and rely too much on delicate wrist, elbow, and shoulder muscles. The moves are all too similar. I prefer staff exercises and forms since they move a lot more,especially double ended staff. Notice that footwork is involved in the staff forms where long pole rarely has that.
For aerobic and an-aerobic conditioning,I suggest the following. All forms train an-aerobic conditioning already. They are fairly short,after all. Do lines of the animals as basic conditioning and keep track of your heart rate all the while you're doing them. If your heart rate gets above 150 after a line then wait until it drops to 120 or so before you do the next one. At around 150,your performance will suffer and you will get exhausted if you aren't used to it. Training according to heart rate will give you feedback so you can gradually increase your volumeof training to continue getting results. You'll notice some animals get your heart rate upmore than others so be smart in how they're combined by stacking easier animals after harder ones and you can train more volume.
Take several of your forms and write the names on a white board or notebook. Do one round of a form at about 50-75% speed then put a hash mark after that form. that's one rep. wait about :30-1:00 until your heart rate slows down then do another rep of that form or do a seperate form(s). What we're doing now is taking an-aerobic training and getting aerobic results from it. This is great for fat loss. You rest just enough to let the heart rate slow and you dont dothe forms at full speed and power unless you're at a high level of fitness. Try to get 30-40 reps of various forms in an hour for a good conditioning workout. You don't need to do the same forms everyday, either. The next day do completely different forms if you have them so you don't overtrain certain movements.
If people have forms from multiple styles then that's even better. Mix the forms you do each day from various styles and you get a greater variety of stances, stance height, technique work, flexibility, etc. all in one hour.
If you don't have enough xingyi forms, Di Guo-yong's Hebei stuff is fairly standard and easy to pickup. Li Tian-ji's book has most of the forms and is available from Andrea Falk.
The biggest issue I've seen with martial artists training for fitness is to get away from what the so-called "masters" say and start using smart fitness programming. You'd get a lot more done in a short amount of time allowing folks to lose fat, maintain their skills, and stay within their styles. This is how i trained CMA at my gym so i can speak for its efficacy personally.