sAtelitte

Thanks for the advice guys Just heard tonight from my sifu that the exam for my next belt has been moved to the end of september. This gives me extra time of course to experiment with these training methods. My first priority will be finding the best position (going to give it a week or two max) and then the endurence using the advice you gave me again, thx, if i reach 2 or 3 minutes i'll let you know

I've been doing shaolin kung fu for 4 months now, i've improved on a lot of things but the one thing which i don't make any progress in is horse stance I have my exam for white sash in two months, it requires i stand in horse stance for 2 minutes, 3 minutes to be safe but as it is (and always has been) i only manage 1 minute After 1 minute it seems i get a bad case of parkinson, start to shake and can't hold it anymore. In horse stance my feet are about 70~80cm apart, and i try to keep the angle in my knees 90degrees but it's usually a bit more. Any advice on this is really welcome

They have been eliminated form the tournament (no big surprise with england and france as their opponents though) Switzerland 1 - France 3 England 4 - Croatia 2 England vs Portugal in the quarter final now, i wonder if aefibird will be dancing then (Portugal is the n1 team for the moment)

Ninja's, lasers and gold

Had a discusion with draven chen zhen about this once after a training we knew there more then a couple of "iron" techniques but didn't want to ask about it cause of the ignorence and us being relative new here. Anyway i always wonderd if you hit your face against a sandbag 1000 times like in iron hand

I think that's what he meant, draven We use that as a warm up exercise about 30 - 50? (we don't count them)in horse stance, 30 to the left and 30 to the right. Before that exercise we do another variant, we take a rock (ranging from 6ponds - 10) holding it with both hands against the chest and then move it forward until arms are stretched in front of you, then back to the chest again. This 50 times in horse stance (we damn well count these ) 50 with left leg in bow and 50 right leg in bow. After these two exercise i'm all out of breath but that's a beginner speaking of course

TangSooGuy, you train with real weapons?? i mean we train with shaolin sword (dao) but they're not sharp at all for a good reason. btw DLopez wouldn't it be smarter to buy a padded nunchaku (don't know the exact word for it) instead of wearing sparring gear

ZR440 => http://www.fantasycars.com/Ford_Puma/Ford_Puma_Photos/ford_puma_photos.html Just heard a story of a friend of mine. He'd tuned a toyota corola and went to germany a couple a weeks ago for a good test ride, when he got back in belgium he apparently didn't adjust his speed all too well, got caught by the police doing 67 km/h where the limit was 50. Result: a fine between 275€ and 1375€ (that's 334$ - 1672$) So i'll just keep driving my snowmobile thank you

It doesn't compete against a camaro or a pontiac trans am but it i'm not complaining, fun to drive and with the huge traffic fines here in belgium i certainly don't need the additional horsepower on-topic: I forgot but the ford puma was a long time on my wishing list of cars as well and not too expensive, too bad they don't come in convertible.

I wish The unfortunate reallity => http://www.cardomain.com/memberpage/536800 (searched google, but this one looks exactly like mine except for the color, it's dark blue)

All things considerd euhm... 2, after 4 months of training, still got a long way to go.

ah, nothing happend, shouldn't be a problem IF they beat croatia and Switzerland, but it would be damn humiliating (and fatal for their championship) if they lost to either one of them

Also driving a Ford fiesta A mazda miata would be a nice or when i win the lottery (like so many others) a dodge viper.

the ones i mentioned (zhen ti tui, cai ti tui,...) are indeed single moves, not forms, perhaps i didn't phrase it so well in my previous post. The forms we see are also called tao (translation = a fight against an imaginary opponent). The basic ones i know of are shaolin tombei boxing, Tsau hong Tsuan boxing. I know three others unfortunatly i'm having problems remembering the exact name ( mabye draven can help out here? ) Shaolin tombei boxing for example are about 20 single moves linked together which we have to preform fluently and with a good sence of timing. Does this sound more like a form to you? I even had to ask my younger sister (who studies for english teacher) to help me out here so i really tried my best to explain it

I suppose if i post other reasons in favor of my academy, you would put them aside as well Anyway i was just wondering, you mentionend basic forms like cheung kuen or tan tui. i never heard of them although i know our basic kung fu kick are Zhen ti tui, Cai ti tui, Wai bai tui and Li guo tui so i assume tan tui has also something to do with kicks?

Of course you're going to win, belgium didn't qualify for the Championship. Bye bye England's biggest threat

Many years ago my nephews tried aikido, by the time my parents allowed me to join them they had given up . Guess it's thx to Draven Chen Zhen i got into shaolin kung fu, i think

Damn, unbelievable people can get away with that. A very good way to give students there a false sence of security, "teaching" them "lethal" techniques, saying sparring isn't really necessary. How are you going to defend yourself with just kata's? I wonder if the instructors there believe what they're doing is an effective MA, or just know they're emptying the pockets of the students there.

Out of curiousity (don't want to be rude here) what's your experience with shaolin kung fu Drunken Monkey? Our sifu's academy is very close with the shaolin community at henan, there's even a monument of "brotherhood" between the temple at henan and the belgium shaolin academy. There have been plenty of occasions where shaolin monks have visited our academy (stayed here for a couple of weeks and gave lessons and demonstrations, plenty of pictures of that on the site). My point, if a belt system is so unnatural for shaolin kung fu then why did genuine shaolin monks (most of them sifu's) gave lessons in such a system here? I bet 80% of the people who join the academy don't know much about shaolin traditions (they're there to learn no?) and i doubt the remaining 20% wouldn't join just because of the belts. I have to admit i've had my own questions with the 32 animal thingy, but thats only a small part of everything we see. Forms (Perhaps you know this as "tao"?) like shaolin Tombei boxing, Tsau hong Tsuan boxing, Yin Shu stick,... "Jibengong" excercise like zhen ti tui, cai ti tui, xu bo liang zhang, Qi long bo zhong quan,... I trust the sifu 100%, i very much doubt we're being thaught an "messy" version of shaolin kung fu.

Was also my first thought when i saw the pictures Also couldn't find any resemblance with shaolin kung fu in their stances, seems like 100% karate to me

I go to the trainings twice a week, each one takes about 1,5 hours, so if my math is correct (which it usualy isn't) 3hours + 1 hour practicing some forms and moves at home.

Guess i'm one of the rookies here, 4 months now but no way in hell i'm going to quit any day soon. i'm beginning to love MA and i'm even starting to think of taking an additional MA something like kendo or iaido (or both ). I'm 21, if i look at my group of beginners and their age i'd say i'm in the middle so i don't consider myself as someone who took a late start. I rather compare to my group at the dojo then the members here on the forum cause you're probably right and i prefer to be in denial

You wouldn't say... No arguement there and apparently gets damaged just as hard P.S Think i'll better choose another sparring partner for tonight's training

I don't know much about aikido but i have to say that shaolin kung fu really worked out great for me. There's not much sparring going on in my school so hurting people won't be a problem (unless of course you would practice iron hand or other "iron" techniques). And if you're fond of weapons i would serieusly recommend shaolin kung fu, we get the basic's with the bo and the shaolin dao (sword). Later on each of us can choose a (shaolin) weapon in which we want to continue our training. This is the way it's done at my school, it could still be different at the one near you though. The best way to find out which suits you best is to go to both dojo's and watch the trainings for yourself.

1 bo 1 katana (for display) Yup, that's my fine collection, and damn proud of it lol