How to be Sick

Two days after the tiger challenge, I got sick. I’m just started to get better and starting to get things back on track because my numbers have taken a severe hit during the week (and a bit) I was recovering. 

I always try to include at least one non-physical personal requirement so that if I get sick or injured I can still maintain my kung fu and practice mastery. The trouble is I almost never employ these requirements when I am not doing well physically.

I know I should be using those contingencies I built for scenarios like this, but I also think it is a bit unreasonable to make any meaningful progress when I am feeling well and truly sick. If I can’t even take a break when I am ill can I ever take a break? This thought is scary, because I know Mastery is relentless (and this may just be because it’s coming off the heels of the tiger challenge) but lately it is feeling a bit too relentless i.e I’m feeling a bit burnt out and its making me fear my requirements rather than seeing them as tools to develop my training. 

I don’t know how to be sick and still train, I’m not sure what that looks like for me. “If I can’t rest when I actually need it I’m going to burn myself out and take even longer to get better” but at the same time, in that same voice in my head I hear ‘it’s too early, you still need to rest, don’t rush your recovery, one more day can’t hurt?’

I am torn, on the one hand I know in the past I have held too tightly to my numbers, trying to do regular pushups even when I am very sick has happened to me more than once. Sometimes I am scared of what will happen if I start to let them slip.

On the other hand I overcorrect this idea. ‘Well I do need to rest so I shouldn’t do anything,’ and sometimes this progresses past the point it is actually true, and becomes an excuse ‘I’m still recovering, I don’t want to rush anything so I better take another day off” and another, and another until it has been almost a solid week of almost no progress in any areas of my training, physical or mental. 

All this to say I don’t know how to adapt my training when things are less than optimal, which I recognize is a huge flaw in the way that I approach my training. Sometimes I think it’s a good mindset to have ‘it doesn’t matter how I’m feeling I should always be able to carry on with my training, if Mastery is relentless then I will have to be too. If Mastery doesn’t care then neither should I’ 

But when this inevitably fails, because of course this is not a realistic mindset to have, eventually I will get sick, I will get injured, I will have to stop, but I have no patterns in my brain to adapt to these changes. When I have to slow down, I just stop. It’s an all or nothing mentality. 

I need to get better at pinpointing the turning-point when it goes from a valid reason for taking a bit of a break, to when I start using it as an excuse, and I need to find out what slowing down actually looks like for me, because it’s nice to write out ‘when I can’t train physically, I have mental training I can do in the meantime’ but clearly I don’t actually do that, it’s just a nice idea, rather than an actual plan that works. I need to figure something else out. 

(Apologies if this blog is a bit all over the place, I wrote it over the course of two days with a fairly large stretch between them and I think the central idea for this blog was different on each day. Interesting to read it as a whole now and see my change in perspective even over such a short time.)

Current Total

Push-ups

11917

Sit-Ups

11448

AOK

324

Km

921

Blogs

14

Sparring

31

Hand Form

130

Weapon Form

170

Repair Relationship

0


Comments

  1. KhonaJune 10, 2026 at 6:51 AM

    I think you need to redefine mastery and redefine Kung Fu for yourself. The art of Kung Fu is the forms, techniques, concepts and training. The practice of Kung Fu goes beyond that to a lifestyle shift. That is where mastery takes place. I think of mastery as the art of making the right decisions at the right time, not just the hard decisions because they may not be the right ones. Does it seem like mastery to push yourself mentally and physically when your body is screaming for recovery? In a shortsighted way, yes. Long term? I wouldn’t think so. Play the long game, which means rest when you need to, recover when you need to, and get back on the horse when it is right to do so. That’s the hard choice, getting on that horse. Mastery comes with knowing where you need to be and being there.

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