May 27th - Strange Week

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Weird Wednesday

This week has been very different and it continues to find new ways to be different. Apparently, us going out to He Gou Village wasn't well received as some people came to disinfect our school Wednesday. All because we went to the new school... this meant that our Basics Class was cut short (though it was a really good class) and our Forms Class was just the students reviewing because Master Peng was busy with the disinfecting people.

Training still was good; I reviewed my staff form, Tong Bei Quan, and Baji Quan with varying degrees of success. We're all waiting for next week (the start of a new month) to begin training Da Hong Quan or the spear! Since Master Peng is teaching the majority of classes now he told us he has a summer training plan for all of us. The plan is during the next 2-3 months we will learn the basics of the spear, a spear form, and a traditional Shaolin Form.

There is a lot of mixed feelings about this new training plan but I'm excited for both. Even though there are not as many stories or tales about the spear as there are about the staff or sword, the spear is just a cool weapon to learn as it was the most common weapon of ancient times... just not the most famous. Japan, China, Europe all, in ancient times, used the spear as their main weapon. Its easy to train, cheap to make, and really effective. There are some famous spear users outside of Shaolin like Yue Fei.

Keep Training

Master Tang's Wisdom

The last class of Wednesday was Sanda Class taught by Master Tang (I'm guessing Master Bao was busy with government stuff). It turned out to be a good class, we worked on footwork and punching technique. We even did a little bit of light sparring! What I enjoyed more was the talk that Raja, Master Tang, and I had after class.

He not only showed us some solo drills that we could do to improve ourselves but he talked about what he's learned from training martial arts so long.

Master Tang's Story

"Master Tang enjoyed doing Sanda from a young age and participated in tournaments a lot but his parents wouldn't allow him to continue competing in Sanda as it was unhealthy. The constant medicine they had to take, weigh ins, the diet. It was all bad, especially for young kids. So his parents wanted him to compete in other ways like forms and weapon performances while still training Sanda on the side. He then went to the Shaolin Temple for a few years until at 22 years he went to College and graduated at the age of 26."

He told us some advice based off of his experience. The first one was to have a dream/goal as without it you won't have a purpose.

The next is to be able to motivate yourself as he said this is very hard to do. Sure, a coach/master/teacher can always push you but once class is over you need to be able to push yourself. This is something many people can't do. He also wanted us to understand that most people are lazy and we at times will feel lazy.

The final point would be something like use your time wisely/well. You always want to be working towards your dream/goal but you need to get the most out of your time now. For example, us being at the martial art school. We should be using this time to study martial arts, not thinking too much about others.

It was a weird but wise Wednesday. How was your Hump Day?

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