Dragon Pools and more training

June 14


Had a nice weekend. Stayed in the academy and watched a few movies with friends. I been trying to get Ash and Sam to go hike the “9 dragon pools” with me again but they always say ‘no’. So i was talking to Brittany, who is from Minnesota, since she had never been there, she wanted to go with me. So Sunday morning Sam and I arranged our room. He doesn’t like the window open but he is on the side of the room with the window but i get really hot. Since its been getting hotter, we decided to change up the room a bit.


After fixing the room, Brittany and i headed up the mountain. We started walking to the pools but got a lift from the head master’s brother, Jack. He runs the shop and is a taxi driver most of the time and helps out a lot. He is a really cool guy. He even goes clubbing with us sometimes. He dropped us off at the pools and we started our climb up. We got to the top of the 9 dragon pools after picture stops and breaks. It took us about an hour. When we got to the top there was a fork. The left was a path an old student told me about that takes you up the big mountain. The problem is, it’s not a smooth path with steps like the hour climb for the Dragon pools. It was a dirt path full of bushes and trees. At the time of course did not know that it was a dirt path, i soon found out.


The right brought us on a route back down the mountain. Well we had to pay 30 yuan to get into the pools so we decided to get the most out of our money. After 3 hours of going through bushes, climbing boulders, and protein bar snack breaks, we made it to the top. It was very tiring but we were pleased we made it to the top of the biggest mountain. It took us a couple hours to carefully climb back down steep boulders and push through the bushes. Next weekend we plan to go to the top of the temple where we do the mountain run. So i will have more pictures to post.


Monday training was pretty hard since i was so sore from the hike.

Master made power training a bit harder now. He said since we are getting stronger with our sprints and bunny hopes he is adding another exercise. When we finished with the sprints and squats with 70 kg, we take off 20 kg and do back lifts with 50 kg and one leg kicks to the base of the hill. Then after that we take off 20 kg and do push outs with 30 kg and bunny hops.


We used to do the hops to the base of the hill but now master told us to jump up the hill which is about 70 meters long. We had to do 8 times each of the three sets. We were really dead after that. I was up in my room when a translator came up and told me to find Raven and come to Shifu's office. I immediately got nervous. Raven is usually in trouble so i thought i must be in trouble too. I found Raven and we went to master's office. Mathieu was there so i thought we were just having a meeting bout training and relaxed a bit. Shifu told us Sam did not want to do the extra power training anymore. He asked if we thought power training was boring. we said no way. he told us Sam told him earlier he doesn’t want to do it anymore. Master was upset he said that because he has seen us improve. he said to me “zi long you have improved a lot in fighting and power”. zi lu, (Mathieu), and zi hao, (raven's chinese name), “not so much improvement. So stop being so lazy!” He laughed and said we all have good traits and we all have things to work on. he first said zi hao you have good flexibility and kicks but you lack power in punches. Zi lu “you have good explosive power and take downs are strong but lack speed and technique”. then he told me i have good power and technique. but i lack power and speed with my kicks. He said i have a lot of power but i only use about 60%.


With the extra power training it will let me use more of my power. It will also help Raven increase his power along with Zi lu's technique and speed. He told us the power training he made for us is precisely to help increase our abilities so when sam said he did not want to train anymore he thought something was wrong and did not want us to quit as well. Chinese students train harder than foreign students but we are young and have a lot of potential so he wants us to train even harder to become better. We told Shifu that we enjoy training even though it makes us tired but we won't quit!

After the meeting i went to talk to Sam. He said he worked better on his own but now since training is harder he will keep with it. The next morning Sam went to talk to Shifu. Sam decided to keep doing power training. Today for power training i used these 5 kg ankle weights i bought at lunch. I used it for the run before class. I can feel my legs working more when i run and i know that will improve my leg strength a lot more. Even though shifu made power training harder i wanted to use the weights. It was difficult but i made it through the first two drills, sprints and back lifts. The hard part was the bunny hops up the hill. The weight felt more like 100 kg rather trhan 5!
hifu came out to watch us to make sure we were doing the drills correct and saw that i had weights on. He smiled and i laughed and said Ya shifu, im training hard! He looked very pleased. After our power training i saw shifu. He told me to so shadow boxing and kicks with my weights on and it will help my speed and power with my kicks. i told him since he said i needed to imrpove my kicks i bought the weights just for that. He laughed and said good Zi long.

i spar Friday so i have been training hard so far this week.

-Scott