An old Sifu used to get me to walk backwards after i was out of breath from practicing a Jow Ga form (long forms). He used to say that walking backwards helped regain my breath/energy quickly. Never understood that, i asked my sifu why that was and he couldn’t understand the principle behind it either.
Anyone ever heard of it before, or what methods do you use to regain your breath/energy. 
If you breathe correctly, you will not be out of breath after your forms. Different moves require different patterns of breathing, and different sounds associated with them. You wouldn’t sink your horse and punch while emitting a tight ‘hite!’ sound, would you? Of course not, it would cause your body to contract too much at all the wrong places and it becomes driving with the parking brake on. The end result? Sucking wind. Rule of thumb; short sharp exhalations for short quick light movements, longer deeper exhalations/sounds (hah) for rooting, and power. This is only the skin and hair of hei gung faht for striking, you’ll have to wait for my book;-)Try this and see what happens. From experience, my strikes are stronger, faster, I can jump easier,I develop much more intensity,and I don’t get winded.
lungyuil
i talk backwards and do things back to front, i also where my clothes the wrong way. i found that this helps your training. 
peace
Yes..learning to breathe properly will help you not to get out of breath so easily.
But, if you are out of breath at the end, take a few deep slow breaths..in through nose/out through mouth. Panting quickly will not give your body as much oxygen. This may help but the key is learning how to breathe properly in the first place and doing it all the time.
Breathing and energy
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=“-1”>quote:</font><HR>An old Sifu used to get me to walk backwards after i was out of breath from practicing a Jow Ga form (long forms). He used to say that walking backwards helped regain my breath/energy quickly. Never understood that, i asked my sifu why that was and he couldn’t understand the principle behind it either.
Anyone ever heard of it before, or what methods do you use to regain your breath/energy.[/quote]
This Shifu seems to have little clue about what he’s doing.
Now, I do NOT recommend sucking wind (I will explain shortly). Rather, I’m more inclined to agree with what Denali’s said - breath in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Performing martial arts can be a fairly aerobic activity, consequently, your breathing rate increases, as well as your heart beat etc.
Now, the important thing here is to learn how to use your lungs in a more efficient manner. Professional athletic training (including olympic level training) involves training the athlete to breathe more efficiently. Olympic athletes don’t have larger lung capacity – their lungs are the same most other people’s. But the difference is that they know how to use their lungs in a more efficient manner. Runners train in high altitude and swimmers learn to time their inhale an exhale rates. They do not suck wind. Sucking wind would actually decrease the efficiency of your lungs. Why? Well, while you inhale sharply, although you’re taking in oxygen, you’re not exhaling carbon dioxide. And as soon as you finish a sharp inhale, it’s automatically followed by a very sharp exhale, as your lungs try to empty out all the CO2 that’s been building up while you’ve been sucking in oxygen. It’s a very inefficient way to breathe.
You could train at high altitudes or take up olympic swimming, but Kung Fu offers another way of teaching people to use their lungs in a better manner – [b]Qigong[/b]. When you strip away all the magical nonsense that some people place around Qigong, it really is fundamentally just a way to control your metabolism through controlling your respiratory/circulatory systems.
Chinese scripts define Qigong as a life energy that flows through the meridians of your body. They are essentially correct, but their somewhat primitive and vague description (which actually is a pretty good description considering that Qigong techniques were developed before the science of microbiology) has led many people to attach many mythical images to what Qigong is.
But here’s what it is from a scientific viewpoint. Every cell in your body contains an organelle known as the mitochondrion. Mitchondria produce energy but use oxygen as a fuel and produce carbon dioxide as a by product. This energy (which manifests as ATP - Adenine Triphosphate) is exactly what the “spiritual” Qi energy that the Chinese discovered (but without knowledge modern science, they perceived the energy as being spiritual). Qigong is supposed to improve the flow of this Qi energy around your body, or what is medically referred to as circulation - since gases are circulated through our bloodstream in the form of oxygenated blood (carried through our arteries) and deoxygenated blood (carried through our veins).
Expending more energy is like driving an old steam engine faster. The train driver needs to shovel more fuel into the furnace to compensate for the excessive power and speed produced at higher speeds. Likewise, when you’re expending more power in aerobic activities such as running, swimming or martial arts, you need to compensate your mitochondria by adding more fuel (ie: oxygen) – as well as extracting the by product (CO2) at an equally faster rate.
This is what keeps people running under extreme conditions for extended periods of time. You will NOT see Olympic class athletes inhale or exhale sharply during their sports. For example, when the starting gun fires, you will not see Cathy Freeman try to expell all the air from her lungs as she takes her first step, and then suck in wind during her next step. If she did, she’d be out of breath in under 20m. Likewise, you won’t see swimmers like Ian Thorpe turn his head to the side and suck in lots of air and stick his face into the water to blow it all out. If you look at the underwater shots of swimmers with their face in the water, you’ll only notice a slender stream of bubbles coming out of their noses. If they were expelling all the air out, you’d see massive clouds of bubbles, much like how little kids like to go underwater and shout their lungs out.
Click here to learn more about respiration and circulation.
So yeah, your Shifu ought to know Qigong techniques to improve the way you breathe. Otherwise, I’d seek a new teacher.
“Wit is educated insolence.” - Aristotle (284-322 BC)
Man, you really are a teacher.
I said an old Sifu of mine.
My current sifu & hopefully my last has taught me the proper way to breathe while practicing the forms from the beginning.
The old sifu never taught us any of that, he always held back. Don’t know why? He just did.
My question simple meant were any of you taught ways to regain your breath after completing a form, not how to breath because every system is different.
Well Done Goktimus!
Goktimus Primal
You have given a down to earth concept of Qi that makes alot of sense! I would encourge others to read it!
Not so sure
I think Goktimus’ explanation is pretty good, but I wouldn’t take it as gospel. There is a lot of research going into Qi both by Chinese and Western scientists. I don’t think anyone has come up with a reliable scientific explanation of Qi yet.
My other question is, if Qi is simply a metabolic process, and Qigong simply allows us to carry out that process more efficiently and to control it, then how does it allow Qigong masters to do what some of them can do? I understand that the energy produced can be used to do some things, but how does it, for example, allow a Qigong master to break a spear against their throat, or withstand blows that would knock most other people out?
And before you put down the ability of Qigong masters to do this, I have personally seen masters do it and verified the validity of the demonstration.
It may be a good explanation, but I don’t think that’s all there is to it.
facts and fantasy
Abandit,
Yes I remember the examples you mentioned " breaking the spear with the throat etc". We must have watched the same Shaw Brothers movie when we were kids. Please grow up.
You’re from Australia - the “Land Down-Under”. That’s hardly an inspiring description for a country. If you represent the average intellegence of the population, could the term Down-Under refer to the lowest quartile of human I.Q.?
Ego Maximize!
ABandit
Placing an unsharpened spear between your collar bones and push forward doesn’t have anything to do with chi. Just physics and tolerance of little pain.
HAHAHA
Ego,
Your wit is so cutting! I don’t know how I can live with myself after such a wonderful statement as your last pointing out my stupidity.
Well, as far as IQs go, I wouldn’t say the IQ of a country that has regular office massacres must be that high, not to mention a country that gave birth to a section of their society known as RED NECKS.
ego
australia is one of the few countries in the world with an official 100% literacy rate.
from memory the USA is at about 94%
(you’re obviously in the other 6%) 
(apologies to any americans who aren’t annoying little twits)
Peace brothers…
Ego all I can say about you is you schmuck…I believe even Buddha will forgive me for saying this.
Australians invented the refridgerator that we have nowadays. So much for IQs…check the national board of statistics and compare the university graduate rates, literacy rates and crime rates…big difference.
Americans…sometimes you believe that nothing occurs outside of your shores. Even in the military…remove the gun down to its bits and components…the US soldiers only strip the gun down to its components…not nuts and bolts. My friend is in the military and he has been in the USMC and is now currently in Oz.
No offence to other Americans but one of your citizens is an idiot.
Amitabha
There’s more than one
Shaolin Master:
I think there is more than one
Sorry, I meant Shaolin Temple, not Shaolin Master. My apologies
The name describes him best EGO with no brain. Does he understand that many inventions came from Australia.
Oh well, maybe we can invent a brain for EGO and say the Americans did it.
Ego Maximize!
Fellas,
As far as the discussion is concern, Premier made a valid point that breaking of the spear can be fully explained by the current laws of physics.
There is no need to resort to ju ju magic stuff. Put it another way, those tricks performed by Shaolin monks are just that - TRICKS. If David Copperfield the magician were to call himself a Shaolin monk, I wonder how many of you will attempt to walk through the great wall of China.
None of you followed up on Premier’s post. Instead, you allowed me to lead you on to an irrelevant discussion of patrotism. From my stand point, its quite entertaining that some of you started quoting statisitcs and which nation invented what.
Remember fellas before you can tame the beast without, you must learn to tame the beast within.
Ego Maximize!
Ego Wankimus
Ego,
You are the one who diverted the discussion by casting aspersions on a nation’s intelligence.
But if you want me to respond to Premier’s comment, then here it is:
Spear breaking is only one example of demonstrations of Qi - probably a bad example because a lot of people do it and manage to fake it. But I have seen it done properly.
I have also seen other manifestations of Qi that aren’t so easily explained by physics, many with healing applications.
And Ego, if you got your head out of your butt for more than a moment you might see that there is the rest of the world around you. Mostly they are laughing at you.
Bloody Americans
Australians also invented the “black box” flight recorder on airplanes.
And hey, if you Yanks are so brilliant, how come you can’t use METRIC SYSTEM?
It’s not hard!! x10. /10. Great Buddha’s bottom, it’s too easy!! 
And at least Australia isn’t perceived by the rest of the world as “the land that looks inward.”
Okay, enough Ego Maximus bashing (sorry Ego, but you asked for it).
Anyway, back to the real issue at hand. The scientific viewpoint of Qigong is what I personally believe Qigong to be. Whether or not you want to accept this POV or reject it or incorporate it with what you already believe, is ultimately up to you.
That’s why we have freedom of speech, so that people can present differing POVs in our quest for the truth.
I’m hoping that we will learn more about how Qigong works, with the information from the mapping of the human genome.
“Wit is educated insolence.” - Aristotle (284-322 BC)
Goktimus,
I don’t think that the lack of use of the metric system is evidence of a lack of intelligence :). However, I do agree that some (not all) Americans can be very blinkered.
I also accept that you can have your opinion on how something works. I’ll agree to disagree on this particular topic. My point of view is that there is more to Qi than basic metabolism. But that is my point of view :).