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China&Peru 2006
After only 3 days of training here, I seriously cannot believe how much I have learnt! (Mostly about the true meaning of pain!...)
On Monday morning we did a 2km warm up run before some fairly dynamic stretches. All at 5:30 in the morning!
After a fairly hearty breakfast (the fairly crappy food here hasn\'t got to me yet!) we then commenced our first training session in our groups. I am in the traditional shaolin forms group, the others being wu shu (acrobatics), bhaji (basically traing for the ability of one punch kills etc.), and sand da (shaolin style kick boxing).
After lunch I took part in some optional sand da training which finished off the job that morning training hadn\'t quite finished; destroying my legs... we were doing circuits on the punch bags (seemingly bags filled with rocks rather than fluff like mine at home), sparring on hand held bags and holding a side kick for three minutes- bl**dy impossible!
Once this was finished we had a break and then went back into our forms training. I\'m being shown the gong li fist form...
Dinner took place at 5 and meditation training then commenced at 7:30 (thought i may as well give it a go!).
Tuesday was similar except instead of sand da, Matt and I did Chin Na, a chinese method for grappling and throwing. Supposedly, the sifu teaching this used to be Chairman Mao\'s bodyguard!!!! (not sure how true that is)
On Wednesday we finished the gong li fist form (3 days is pretty quick to learn it i think) but we still need plenty of practice before it is perfected! Our sifu says that he will next teach us a mantis sword form...
In the afternoon, after t\'ai chi practice, I was playing around in the training hall and not only did one of those cool things when you flick yourself upright from lying flat on the concrete floor (only really done them on mats before), but I also did my first headspring!!! Headspring are kind of between somersaults and roly-polies, where you land on your head and then back on your feet. Hopefully I\'ll be able to do them without mats before long...
Other than that, my legs are leaden, the weather was fantastically hot on Monday, but a little cooler today and yesterday; and we\'re having an awesome time!
Hope everyone\'s ok, let me know what your\'e all getting up to!
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