Guidelines for 100 Days Training

Here are the guidelines, according to Sifu Steve:

The “100 Days’ Training” is an old traditional Asian martial arts custom, intended to mimic certain elements of the “3-Months” training retreats which are traditional in certain branches of Daoism and Buddhism.

The elements involved in this kind of training are:

Get your ducks in a row. (Does that mean developing a Duck Qi Gong??) 
Photo by  Tomas Castelazo, via Wikimedia Commons

A clear objective.

Set out what you will do, when, how long, and what you want to accomplish.

A public commitment = equivalent to the old temple vows. 

Last time around I dedicated myself to 1 hour+ per day of the Old Yang form. This time, I am not specifying times, but shall work with animal material every day, the objective being to more deeply internalize the animal energies, and also to have, three months from now, at least 3 more animal forms of Tai Chi. As far as this goes, I'm polishing the Snake form, and hope to eventually have a Tiger and a Dragon. These forms will have a sequencing independent of any form we now do.

Record-keeping and public reportage. 

In the past I diarized. I also last time made entries on the Club Facebook page, but had very little commentary of feedback. This time: a blog for the group participating in this project, to share our progress, problems etc.

Final evaluation. 

At a nice Chinese restaurant, say, the beginning of April?

Dangers to the process are:

Over-commitment.

Your objective must be ambitious, but achievable. Almost invariably, new entrants to this process bite off more than they can chew, and then get discouraged when they cannot keep up the effort.

Concentration on quantity rather than quality. 

15 minutes of intense and intelligent practice are worth much, much more than an hour of rote exercise put in for purposes of satisfying your commitment and your ego! Don't set yourself up to fail!

Neurotic commitment.

Focusing upon the commitment, rather than recognizing times when your ability to perform is negated by ill-health or other factors. In other words, your 100 days will probably take more than 100 days! Be reasonable! Don't punish yourself!