November 24th - Kettlebells and Nightmares

A View of Shanghai from Pudong

The past couple days have been good. I met up with my friend, JD, before he went off to Spain and ate some really good food with my girlfriend. Besides the weird nightmares I've been having its been a good few days of life.

Let's talk about kettlebells first, then the nightmares.

Guan Yu Holding a Guan Dao

Since I'm now trying to train more intelligently and actually understand the body/exercises more I've gone into the route of looking up kettle bell workouts to add into my routine. Not because they are a "fad" or shortcut to results, but because they suit Kung Fu really well.

You can see a "Kung Fu Kettle bell" under the staff

You might've seen it in some Kung Fu movies or pictures. Guys working out with some concrete blocks, jumping around, and punching trees or slapping sand bags. Then, you see people today punching sandbags, lifting weights, and throwing kettle bells. Nothing really has changed, just what we train with and some methods of training. I find it odd though that the Russians get all the credit for the kettle bell (they did develop a lot of the modern day methods of training with it) but the Chinese, especially the southern Chinese martial artists, can be seen weight training.

So I'm going to be adding the Kettle Bells to my training regime not only for the benefits but to keep this kind of training within Kung Fu.

(Check out this cool video that mirrors my thoughts about Kung Fu in the modern day)

Nightmares. They've plagued me for three nights now. A weird cat with a baby's head, a mysterious door that has five handles, and a woman (like that from the grudge) on the floor without lips eating something. Just weird how the mind is able to come up with these things but each time I encounter these I wake up flinging from my bed. There is no stress or problems in my current life so I'm not sure why this is happening. 

I do feel tired a lot but I believe this is from my training. Now getting up early isn't as important because I don't have to train like I did in the Kung Fu School. It could be because Shanghai's wet winter is quickly approaching. The cool mornings are not the easiest thing to wake up to.

The nightmares will go away and I'll continue training until I have to head home.

Hope you're having a good week.