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| Part of the obstacle filled path I took through the forest this morning. |
Its been a month since I've been to Shaolin training. For the entire month of October the bulk of my Shaolin brothers have been in China, living and training at the Shaolin Temple and attending the World Traditional Wushu Championships.
Because of this our training times back here in Brisbane changed substantially and due to my work schedule I was unable to get to any of the classes. I've been smashing my Mountain Bike a fair bit though so by heart and legs are still getting a work out.
But now they are back, and our training is intense. They have all been training with the monks so their training level is far beyond mine, plus the month off, so first day back was insane. BUT. I got through it.
I would have loved to have gone with them this time however I only started training earlier this year and it came around far too quickly. So now I have to wait 2 years for the next trip to China. Bonus of this is, I've now got 2 years to prepare myself for the temple. I'm still learning Mandarin (slowly but surely) so the next focus is on training. Lots and lots of training.
Key elements we keep getting told, Flexibility, Strength, and Speed. Faster stretchy compressed coiled springs for bodies is our number one goal in every training session.
I cant get to Shaolin Kung Fu Guan every day, but there is a fair bit I can do at home in my own time. Stretching, forms and strength training are the obvious things, but I wanted to mix it up with something a bit different. So this morning I planned to head out into the forest around home and do some irregular running through mountain paths filled with obstacles like tree roots, large boulders and rocky stairways. This is far more demanding on legs and ankles compared to flat ground running (and more fun) and scaling or jumping over fallen trees and land slips makes for a pretty intense workout. I took the Strava app with me just to track distance and elevation but you'll notice times are all over the place each km due to the type of landscape I was dealing with.
Until next time.
