Week 3 Power Training Wednesday

(Editor's Note:  Because power was out in Scott's dorm and I was away from my computer for last couple days, I am uploading three blogs today. Week Three,  Monday, Tuesday and this one from Wednesday.  Steve)

Chinese word of the days: 3-San

4-Si

5-Wu

6-Liu

7-Qi

8-Ba

9-Giu

10-Shi

British word of the day: Wicked-means-cool/awesome.

This morning I was soooooo sore. I think it's from yesterday's stance training. I waddled down to breakfast and had my warm oatmeal...without chococlate. Tomorrow I get to add hot chococlate mix! (I ration it to make it last) After breakfast I went to my room to get ready for my first class. Today was POWER TRAINING. 

When i went to class it was freezing. I had my thermal shirt on, hoodie, North Face jacket, sweats with kung fu pants on top,scarf, and benie all on. the usual. Once we started doing drills I would get hot but I wouldn't want to sweat because I'd freeze. I would take layers of clothing off as I warmed up. thank you boy scout snow training which taught me about layers. After class was over we had a small break. Morning classes are usually easiest part of the day. Training gets more instense after lunch. Why? I have no idea thats just how things work. Second class was Baji class. Practiced two person warm ups where we would bang forearms, shins, backs, and shoulders against each other. Another form of conditioning. I liked Baji more than Wing Chun so far. Baji is more rough and more hands on than Wing Chun but then again I'm only in week 3. So after warm ups Master taught me a few more steps in the second form. to be precise, he showed me three more moves, which is about 1/8th more of the total form. Getting taught one small section at a time drives me insane.

Lunch was great. Had lunch at the Tea Game table. The tea game is where everyone is eating then someone calls out tea randomly and everyone has to put their hand on the salt and pepper shaker in the middle of the table and the last person who touches the salt and peper has to go get the tea for the whole table. At other tables people do it differently. At some tables people will volunteer to get the tea and at others you just get tea for yourself. But it was fun learning this new game. If you remember the guy I wrote about who I had the dicussion about tattoos with at the time I didnt know his name. Well he was at my table for lunch and he was the one who explained the game to me. His name is Rorey. One of the coolest guys here I think. Well luckily i wasn't the last person to touch the salt and I had a good lunch.

Afterward i went upstairs and I decided since I have 2 hours before next class I will do my laundry. So Sam was nice enough to show me how it all worked. He showed me were the laundry room was and which machine to use. I bought some Tide laundry detergent at the school store but when I was loading my washer, Sam showed me someone left a bag of detergent and he managed to pour some in the washer for me. We both headed back to the room and I waited. After 30 min of reading my new book I went to check my laundry. It was done and Sam said there are no dryers so you had to line dry your clothes. I have always.....always used a dryer. I have only used a clothes line to dry my clothes once. It was when I was in Israel with Rabbi, Lindy, and Jory and we were staying at their friends house for a couple days. They taught me how to fold the cothes over the line then clamp it down with a clamp. I remembered that little technquie when I hung my clothes up to dry. I bought a few extra clamps at the store which I ended up using because I couldn't find anymore on the line. 

After laundry I read more of my Lost Hero book and relaxed till class. Then time flew by and it was class time. We started off stretching in the big training hall with the other classes. I talked to Rodney while we stretched each other.  I said to him "Great since the other classes are here we won't have to do drills across the whole floor just half way." Well I was wrong. After stretches the other classes all moved outside. It was like they knew we were about to start drills and let us have the whoooole floor. I couldnt help but laugh...a hurtful laugh. First we had to do duck walks. Not too bad. Then when we reached the end of the hall we had to do duck walks back...another hurtful laugh. Then we paired up and did wheel barrels to the end and back. I paired up with Rodney. He makes fun of me for running slow when we do the morning and afternoon runs. He is taller than me so one stride for him equals 3 strides for me. But I have a bit more upper body muscle than him so when it was his turn to wheel barrel across the floor he kept collasping. I would tease him and say, "Come on Rodney the kangaroos are running faster than you now." Or i would say, "stop fooling around and get to the end already." I didnt mind teasing him since I went first so he couldn't tourment me while I wheeled barreled across the floor. After that we had to do hops across the floor. For some reason, I don't even know why but these were really fun! They really hurt! But when I hopped along I was laughing and smiling. I have a habit of smiling when I am in pain but this time even I thought i was 'losing it' for a moment. But when Rodney told me I am laughing so much that I must be crazy, I just punched him. 

After the hops we had to jump on one foot and kick with the other while we stayed on the jumping foot. the other couldn't touch the ground. That was hard. After that we did more jumping drills, spinning drills, and running drills. Once we finished we started the Power Stretching part. We all grabbed a pad and did stretches. Splits, butterfly presses, and other stretches but this time we would have someone pushing our face down or pull out our legs more. This made 'regular stretching' to 'power stretching'. Then Master said we had to do push ups on fingers then knuckles. Then he said "only" 30. 30 push ups aren't bad but try going from knuckle push up to fingers then pushing off the ground with your fingers and landing on your knuckles then landing on your fingers 30 times. It starts to hurt. Then we had to do 'planks' on our knuckles. Master said "only" 8 minutes. We do 2 minutes of planks everyday so when he said 8 minutes I thought he was kidding. I was wrong. He really ment 8 minutes. After 5 minutes I had to hold myself up with my palms because my knuckles hurt too much but when we had 2 min left i toughed it out and went back on my knuckles. After the 8 minutes everyone collasped. I was laughing in pain. then we did a lot of V ups for abs, ab holds for 5 minutes, and then 10 ONE ARM PUSH UPS. Rodney doesnt even try those.  The first week i tried and I had trouble doing them,  but today....I did 10 each hand non-stop. I was shocked! I didn't even know that I am gaining upper body muscle. I can tell I am gaining lower body muscle through stance training and running but we barely do upper body stuff.

After class I showered up and just crashed on my bed and read my book till dinner. When it's meal time everyone lines up outside the dining hall and waits to be served. The thing is people would just cut and run in front so its pointless to wait at the door early. Since it's been cold I have been waiting a bit longer in my room so when I go to get my food the line is short and I don't have to wait outside in the cold. Today I went to dinner and I waited an extra ten min and there were about 8 guys in front of me but no one was behind me. When I got my food I just walked back to the front of the line to get seconds. They ration out the food so sometimes you don't get a lot but with my new little trick I can get seconds real quick! i thought that was ingenious and worth waiting a few extra minutes. At dinner I sat at Luigi and Mario's table. Luigi and Mario are two Spanish guys in my Wing Chun group. I don't know their real names but they remind me of Luigi and Mario from the video game "Mario Brothers. One is tall and the other is short with a MUSTASH! They are both from Barcelona and are here till Christmas. They are best friends for 10 years now and they both trained in Kung FU back in Spain and they both wanted to come to China to train. They are pretty funny. They missed Monday class so I asked where they were. They left last weekend to go to a different province to go sight seeing and see different temples. While I discussed with Luigi where they went and how the trip went Mario would say something to Luigi and they would litterally bicker at each other and say some things in Spanish then Luigi would continue the story with me. It was the funniest thing I have seen here. Mario would make fun of Luigi every now and then but they made dinner very fun. 

Afterward I finished up dinner and now I am back in the room. After this I will read my book and go to bed.

-Scott