Couch to 5k
I didn’t really want to post about this until it was showing some signs of success. But I began to work through Zombie Run 5k. I found it hard, to say the least. I began to cause knee injury and cause some muscular issues. But that’s not stopping me. I have given myself space to recover, while maintaining a regular brisk walk daily for 30 minutes and I am about to get back into the saddle. It’s been going on and off for months now. But having only done walking for a couple of weeks I am ready to go back to running again. However in doing so, I must recognise that my body is very unfit, I have high blood pressure and I need to take the course at a slower speed than most people because I need to achieve more changes in my body than most people do.
My plan at the moment is to practice my vocal exercises everyday then either walk briskly for 30 or do a zombie 5k exercise for 30-50mins (alternating days). I need to wait until I can do the full week and extra exercises before moving on to the next week. Then I get back in I can rest for a bit and on the days when I am doing the harder exercise, I will need to work through a series of exercises from Fujian White Crane School’s Kungfu system.
Including:
- 10 push ups
- 10 sit ups
- 10 squats (carefully to avoid knee damage)
- 1000 punches (batches of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1)
- 20 leg lifts to stretch leg flexibility
- 20 leg lifts to opposite side
- 20 leg lifts to side (with blade of foot)
- 20 leg lifts to side (with toes pointed up)
- 20 upper crane block
- 20 lower crane block
- 20 twin upper crane block
- 20 twin lower crane block
- 20 front, back, side thrusting kick
- 20 triple upper crane block
- 20 triple lower crane block
- 20 low, medium, high round house kick
- 20 upper, lower, upper crane block with supporting hand
- 20 lower, upper, lower crane block with supporting hand
- 10 Double Mad crane kick
- 10 Uppercut
- 10 Back hammer fist
- Shuffle forward, Twin punch, Twin palm strike, shuffle back, washing machine, grab, downside
- Tiger swipe
- Tiger strike
- 1st pattern
Following some minor injuries, I had to take a break from this, but I am walking every day and soon as I am off some antibiotics (today is my last day), I will begin practising running again, but I will stay at “week 2” till the end of January and “week 3” through most of February before proceeding because I could not go straight to the week 4 exercises without severe cardiovascular issues, regular muscular injury and inflamed tendons, last time. Taking it slow, but always progressing is the key to success in exercise. When I am confident with the exercise and it is getting easier, I will re-introduce the kung fu. I am also applying for an early trial of Alter Titan a similar app which turns exercise into a video game!
Okay I’m really listening to my body and trying to do week 1 nice and slowly for a few weeks which has taken me into February. I really hope I can catch up and complete this before Alter Titan is released. I want to complete it
Singing Course
So anyone that knows me. I sing… a lot. But my singing is mostly average. I find I often get moisture in the lungs, probably from being overweight and the impact this has on the heart. So I have to deal with a few issues. I hope to use this article to record my work as I go and keep me aware of whatever the last thing I was doing when I come back to the course. I find blogging helps me keep focused somehow and I like to be open with people about myself so I might as well publish the results.
Why? What’s the Application?
For the most part I just love singing and I love self-improvement, so why not? But other than the odd bit of karaoke, why might I seek out a course like this? Anyone who has seen me in drag, knows I work singing into my entertainment so there is an immediate use of this course! My voice is pretty good for a voice that isn’t coached, but it really isn’t at its full potential. Luckily for drag you don’t need to have voice that is a dead ringer for Shirley Bassey. So it has worked a little bit, but no-one wants to hear someone who is shit.
My voice does need a lot of work. For a long time I have wanted to pay for vocal coaching, but I decided before I fork out a lot of money I would try and see what I can do with a reasonably cheap course first.
What Course?
I picked a rock singing course from Udemy because I am particularly interested in techniques such a vocal fry and shouts that are more common place in rock singing. Sadly so far the course doesn’t seem that great, but it at least gives me something to work on and investigate each time and comes with exercises so I will try to withhold judgement until the end, but for now I will not mention the name of the course.
Regular Practice
Once again this is another exercise that needs to be practised a lot. In fact the course has a section called train like an athlete. So I guess this would precede my training for 5k which in turn precedes any kungfu training.
Voice Range
I find it hard to identify my “Fach” or vocal range. There are 25 different fachs to compare to and I don’t know them all. Very often my range, which I estimate to be around G3-E6 undeveloped, allows me to cover quite a few of them including: Bass (using low techniques), Baritone (using low technique), Tenor (easy), and Soprano (using resonance). I can also hit most of contralto and contratenor, but the practice pushes me into head voice. Tenor seems to be the most comfortable for me.
Stretch the Voice
Techniques for lower voice. Working with your growl, fry and subharmonic register, according to this video. Having practiced these techniques I think I need to practise them regularly to smooth it out.
To go higher and still sing with power you need to use a belting technique. Often this can be achieved by using a resonance chamber behind the nose. Unfortunately the Youtube artist, Felicia Ricci has removed most of her videos from when she was teaching belting, but I was able to find this one below where she talks about using the resonance chamber.
When I was going through her videos there was one where she helped people find the voice by saying “Nya” in a whiney child voice. (If you listen and emulate the sound from this video of the most annoying sound in the world. Then you will feel where this sound occurs.) This sound causes a vibration behind the nose. If you then try to combine this with a voice that vibrates in the chest to get rid of the nasal quality then you can use it for loud and high pitched piercing notes.
Mixed Voice
The interesting part of doing singing courses is that you really need to learn the human anatomy that is involved so you can train each muscle in isolation to allow for better singing and use all the chambers inside the body to create a resonant sound.
What is a resonant sound?
In physics resonance is where identical waves begin to overlap creating a more powerful wave. For example bridges have a natural frequency they vibrate at. That vibration is a bit like a really fast swing moving backwards and forwards. Now if you always push a swing as it moves away from you, you get a greater and greater swing movement. In some cases with bridges the wind has had that affect of pushing the vibration in a similar way and just increasing the vibration over and over.
A similar affect is created when a glass which vibrates as a natural frequency has someone sing the frequency at it which increases the glasses vibration until it vibrates so much that it can no longer hold itself together.
In singing there are different sounds created by causing resonance to occur within different air chambers within the body. Chest voice is the sound of singing when resonance occurs within the chest. Head voice uses the huge nasal cavity to create resonance. Now these different places have a different range of notes they an produce known as a vocal register. I used to think falsetto was the same thing as head voice but it is actually more open and airy with less vocal chord vibration as a result. This is a vocal mode rather than a register because it is about which parts are used rather than the range achieved (other modes include vocal fry and whistle).
With a good amount of effort you can blend these different registers together so that you can move from one voice to another seamlessly to create a single overall range. To help this process it is often worth working on the mixed voice which is the point where you are using both nasal resonance and chest resonance at the same time. This allows for an easier cross over between different registers.
One of the major issues I am hitting is that for years I have always had a lot of mucus around larynx. I will need to see if regular irrigation of the ENT passages helps.
30th Jan – more to come
Machu Picchu
Me and my best friend Charita are up for climbing Machu Picchu we have set our sights high and it’s quite a lofty goal to go along the Incan trail. We have never done anything like it before. In the mean time we are looking at climbing in the UK starting with Box Hill on 22nd March 2020 and Blencathra on 3rd April 2020.
I am a little over excited and can’t wait to climb Ben Nevis and Bein a’Chrulaiste before stopping by my plot in Glencoe woods.
Unfortunately the spread of the Coronavirus in 2020 prevented us from being able to work on this!
Third Kung Fu exam
So I completed my Third major Kung Fu exam on Sunday 2nd February 2020 and passed! I’m very glad. I am mostly impressed that I have kept this up consistently and I’m now well into my third year.
Sadly my teacher’s mother is ill and classes have been reduced to once a week so I am doing my Kung Fu training with T’ai Chi (taijiquan) once a week with a friend called Moz in addition to the Wednesday class.
Broken up by a series of 10 push-up, 10 sits up, 10 squatts, we run for 10 minutes with squatts and long jumps mid run, followed by bunny hops, kangaroo jumps, duck walking, then 100 punches, 30 stretching leg lifts ( front, opposite shoulder, side, side with toe up), 70 kicks (front thrusting, back thrusting, side thrusting, crane kicks, triple round house kicks). This usually takes 15 minutes.
After the conditioning of kung fu, we are practice Yang-style Taijiquan including, stepping, form, pushing hands and some applications. This is based on what we had learned from classes and based on a series of DVDs by Yang Jwing-Ming to augment and solidify the knowledge from classes.
Sadly due to Covid-19 in 2020 all face-to-face classes were put on hold. I decided to take up running for a bit in the hope this would help me with part of the class that I struggle to keep up with.
Kung Fu Foundation Complete
After months of hard work I finally managed to get my red belt. That means sparring and harder work to come. We are all very proud of ourselves and I want to take this moment to state no matter what someone’s size or physical fitness if they truly want to they can set aside some time to learn a sport. Even someone like me!
