NEWSLETTER

CHINA - 2009

As many of you will know, over the last five years, I have taken groups to China to train in Kung Fu.

The purpose of the trip is to give you a real Kung fu experience and train under the famed Song Shan Mountains in Shaolin. The Shaolin temple is considered to be home of Kung Fu and is set in the beautiful mountains an hours flight away from Beijing.

In previous years we have flown to Beijing and spent a night there before embarking on the journey to ZhengZhou. From there we transfer to Shaolin and stay in the school attached to the temples for ten days. After training, we return to Beijing for a few more nights where we get to experience an amazing city and do the tourist bit. In previous years, this has included The Great Wall of China and some great shopping!

The training is hard. We wake at 5:30 in the morning to a wailing siren that signals thousands of Chinese Kung Fu students to begin the daily ritual of running to the temples, morning training and then sprinting back. Breakfast is well received after this and then training lasts for three hours. After lunch, a further three hours of training sets up us for a good meal and an early night to start again the following day. We do four days of this, have a day off and then do another four days.

Training consists of weapons, open handed, tai chi, fitness and flexibility. Once we arrive, you get to choose what you want to do within the group.

One student, Sarah Oliver writes:

“From the moment we arrived in Shaolin, we felt like we had landed in ‘kung fu land’!  Everywhere we looked there were students from the age of about 8 to 21 practicing kung fu.  It was a big culture shock when we arrived at the school but we were soon settled in to the training program and regime of the student’s everyday life.  It was such an amazing opportunity to experience the life and training in a Chinese kung fu school.  There were days when we were so tired and ached so much that it was hard to get up or start the next session, however, this just added to the whole experience.  The trip was an experience that I will never forget.”
I will be running another group in April 2009. Although this seems like a long time away, I wanted to introduce the trip to you now, so you can consider if you wish to come along. In April 2008, I will be organizing a small presentation to give you more information.

Grading for 2008

The next grading will take place on Friday 20th June 2008.The grading will start at 7:15. Please begin thinking about this now as the date always seems to come around very quickly. Let me know if you want to look at any specific area of training for your next grade.

Its your newsletter

Thanks to Matt for the article last new letter on foot wear for training in martial arts. I had some really good feed back on this. If you have any thing to say about training, a book or DVD review or you want to contribute, please let me know and I’ll include it next time. The idea of the news letter is to have forum that gives lots of information to you about up and coming events. However, I would love to have your views about what you would like to have in a news letter. Email me your articles or feed back neil@ukkungfu.com

We have also put a copy of the news letter on the web site now for your reference.

Up and coming courses

I have had a number of students recently requesting courses for me to run this year. I have over the years spent time running courses for all students at all levels and these have had a range of successes depending on the numbers who attend. I thought I would introduce three courses on subjects that are always very popular, but I do not get time to cover in much detail in the classes. I will be advertising them very soon with dates, but they are likely to cover Tai Chi, Shiatsu and weapons (staff).

Paint Ball – OUCH!!!.

Time to get your own back on your instructors or other students you just can’t hit when sparring them!

On April 13th, I have organised a paintball game at Tree Jumpers, near Brands Hatch.
Interested? I have booked 30 places, so let me know by 1st April. It is free entry and paint balls only cost £5.00 per 100. I only need a £10.00 deposit (to secure booking with tree jumpers, which includes your first 200 paintballs, breakfast and lunch.) Check out http://paintball.treejumpers.com for more details and directions.
Never been before? Give it a go, it’s a brilliant day! Day starts at 9am and finishes at approx 3:30pm

Signing into Class

Please remember to sign into class in the book on the desk, indicating if you are paying by direct debit or cash. This helps me to keep my records straight and keep up to date with your attendance.