20 Minute flurry

Over my "vacation" the house we rented had a bunch of National Geographics and the top one just happened to have an article on Shaolin Temple. I didn't have time to read it, but one of the pictures should young teens at Shaolin Temple doing a "twenty minute flurry to build stamina." This is not the first time I heard of this. My Sifu taught me something similar. But I focused on speed and distance travelled with your feet first and variations second.  I you watch the opening of the HIghlander TV show, you will see a short clip of McCloud (the long black haired one) doing something similar, except he is more or less standing in the same place and therefore doing a bunch of kicks to work the lower body.
When I first became a stay at home dad, I was doing a 20 minute workout. The workout started with  more pushandsy internal moves and built to a Kung Fu sprint and included forms etc. I haven't been doing that and when I started practicing more regularly again I was doing forms in a Yogic like fashion. In New Hampshire I picked up the 20 minute flurry idea again after looking at the picture. I decided to do all my forms, inside the housem while it was raining. This turned out to be a mistake because, not having done them for a while, and not having really warmed up, and not having the space I felt like I had slightly twisted my ankle. Not enough to notice at the time, but something I felt after I stopped. I also did it too much like a Beserker sprint. The next day I decided to do the flurry outside and also to do it free style. That way I had more control over how much I moved , instead of letting the form control what technique was next. This enabled me to adapt to the surroundings better and prevent injury. Also when you get tired, its good to do simpler moves fast instead of following a complicated form pattern. OF course I still used combinations from the form and I was able to do this while my kids played in the playground. SO far I've kept up my little routine. IN fact Yesterday I did the flurry inside and it still worked pretty well. The main thing is I start off with very simple Internal moves and I don't ever speed up exactly to a sprint. Another benefit is if I do this outside, the pows and cups (haymaker like things) actually shoo mosquitoes and other bugs away.
Today I even used the same concept to do a "flurry" with a stick before My little playgroup in the park. This way I will be able to fit in my weapons work as well. I used to do this before too, but I always considered it a sort of snack of a workout instead pf a meal. The only difference now is that it is pretty much all I do. I try to do some Yogic like thing in the morning, with mainly stances, and then eventually it would be nice to do a yogic like thing at night. Eventually I would hope to extend the 20 minutes to 45 minutes so that it would be a substantial cardio workout.