"To Be a Champ, You Must Train Like a Champ"

My belief is that if you TRULY want to become GREAT not just good... but GREAT at any specific thing, it MUST be engraved into your lifestyle. You must commit the time and focus to become GREAT at it.

The best example I can think about is the P90X program and others of that sort. I'm sure a lot of you know what it's about and for those who don't, in summary; it's a fitness program that promises to help you lose weight, get fit, and look amazing in only 90 days. How it works, is the intensity of physical training you must endure for 90 days alongside with a very strict diet that they provide you. The real key factor in the success of that program isn't the work out they put you through or the diet they give you. In fact, it's not any different from going to see a personal trainer and get a dietary plan from your local nutritionist. But in reality, it's based on how they change your life during those 90 days. How much you eat, what you eat, what you do after work, before work, during your lunch break, before you go to sleep, how much physical activity you do a day, a week, or month. They have now changed your priorities, pushed everything else going on in your life to the sidelines, focusing you specifically into getting healthier and fitter to look amazing.

Then what? What happens after those 90 days are over? You have now achieved what you wanted, what will you do now? Without any real knowledge and understanding of physical fitness or nutrition what can you possibly do? For most cases, people just stop and revert back to their old lifestyle keeping in mind that if they ever require to get fit again they'll just do the program again or for some they can put a check mark next to "Get Fit" and move on with their life. That is what I call a phase and slowly they will just go back to a less physically active and worse eating lifestyle.

How does all of this relate to Martial-Arts?  Everything. In martial arts, unlike anything else out there, you are your own tool or instrument. Your body is like the skates to a hockey game, the music sheets to a musician, the hammer to a construction worker, or even the keyboard to a computer. In that sense, your body is literally like your temple. How you treat it will define how well you will perform in martial arts and it must be with a good lifestyle that you can maintain the right kind of training.

Martial-Arts must be carved into your lifestyle for you to become great at it. You must attend class on a regular basis and the more you go the greater you will become. Even with minor injuries you can still maintain a good level of training such as a sprained wrist you can still work on your kicks, or a fractured toe you can work on your punches. I've seen students get injured and stop training for months and when they come back they get frustrated with their skill level. You can retain the knowledge but never the skill, it's like a plant that constantly requires water and care. Don't get me wrong, even with a high attendance but poor focus you won't excel. You really need both with pinch of hunger to become better that you will be GREAT!

That would be the preferable choice for most, but again we are not Shaolin monks. We all have school or work, kids and families which are more of a priority. It's understandable that not everyone can come to class as often as they would like and perhaps only come once or twice a week. In that situation I can only suggest one thing for you...MAKE IT COUNT! Increase the quality of your training and if you can come early and start your warm up so that when class actually starts you won't waste time with it. You can jump right into your training without missing a second of it. Focus on key areas that you believe you need more improvement on, ask for your Sifu to look over your material and ask for feedback. If they are not available get one of your Sihings for help. Write down their feedback and then drill it over and over and over again until you've MASTERED the move and go to the next one.

In martial arts, no one has control over your skill level and no one can ever tell you how great you will be or bad you will be. YOU are your own master, your body is YOUR instrument and unlike any team sports you won't let anyone down by failing but yourself...only YOU can say how good you can truly become, so don't ever let yourself stop you from your true potential to GREATNESS.

I know Kung-Fu...

Martial-arts is part of who I am, it's been intertwined with my life. I sweat it, dream it, breathe it, poop it...you get my point, I simply just live it. It all started when I was about 5. My parents signed me up for Tae Kwon Do or Karate. I can't really remember what it was, but I hated it. After I had passed my yellow belt to get my orange belt, I told my dad that I no longer wanted to pursue that martial-art.

Throughout my childhood my parents would expose me to a lot of Kung-Fu movie. When my dad noticed me throwing kicks and punches in the air trying to immitate the Kung-Fu movies that we were watching, he decided to enroll me in a Kung-Fu school. At that time my dad didn't really know any good kung-fu schools but I had some cousins already enrolled in one, so my dad took me there. Sa Long Cuong was the name of it and It wasn't really a school at that time, it was more like a friend of my uncle who learned kung-fu in Vietnam and taught it to us for free in his basement. After a few years, my family had to move away due to a divorce and due to the move I could no longer train there. 

What brought me back to learn martial-arts after a few years was how much I was bullied around in school, so I looked in the phone book and saw the name "L' Academie Shaolin White Crane" in Montreal. I remember thinking..."Dude, It's S-H-A-O-L-I-N! THAT'S AWESOME!!" I showed it to my mom and we went down for a visit. We also went to check out a Hungar school just down the street but I was not going to take Hungar over SHAOLIN. After one visit my mom signed me up for White Crane Kung-Fu.

Some years went on and with a lack of guidance in my pre-teen years, I was heading towards a dark path. My mom who couldn't handle my behaviour along with my baby sister, and teenage brother decided I was just too much. So she sent me over to my dad who lived in Mississauga for him to straighten me up. Coincidently, while looking up the yellow pages in Mississauga I found another Shoalin White Crane school. My Dad took me there for a visit and it turned out that this Sifu was my Sifu's Sifu from Montreal and I've been at that school ever since.  

There were periods in my life where I just couldn't train martial arts, like when I was in High school in Atlanta Georgia there were no kung-fu schools in the area I lived in so I founded my own martial-arts club, I started a petition to open a martial-arts club, I received over 60 signatures from interested students to join, then I found a sponsor, became President and even taught martial arts to the students in my club.

When I was in College back in Mississauga, I was living on my own and I just couldn't afford to go back to kung-fu class. Although I maintained a good level of fitness and kept training kung-fu at my school's gym or wherever else I could find space to train in such as empty dance rooms in the Living Arts Center, it just wasn't sufficient. Soon enough I no longer felt like myself, as if a part of me was dying and right after, I fell into a depression. Everyone around me could see the change in me, they could see my personality change for the worse and one day I knew it wouldn't get any better unless I did something about it.

With the support of my girlfriend, we decided that regardless of our financial situation I would HAVE to find a way to come up with some money to pay for my membership fee. If that meant cutting back on groceries, or cut off our cable TV for a few months, so be it. I would often visit my old kung-fu school just to keep in touch with everyone and on one of my visits I told my Sifu what I had planned to do so I may join the class again, luckily my Sifu is a very accommodating Sifu. He sat me down in his office and found a way to accommodate me and my situation so that I may get back to my training right away. The next week I came back to train. This is the kind of Sifu that you know isn't like any one of those "MacDojos" Sifus. A real genuinely traditional Sifu, which after many years of training under him I have grown to love and respect him like a father.

So this is where I start to discuss with you my philosophy in training in Kung-Fu...but that'll have to wait for my next blog as I need to get back to work. This ending is the perfect start to my next blog, so please stay tuned... :)

Back On The Drawing Board

After a week going by since my return, I do feel like my old self is coming back. I've had a lot of time to analyze my fight through videos, people's comments, memory, and feeling and I have to say that I'm not so dissapointed anymore. Just like Sifu said, it wasn't that I was weaker and lost or beat by a much more skillfull fighter, but it was that my opponent had more aggression and thirst for the win then I did. I'm not trying to bring down my opponent's skills, or his win on our match at all. He was strong, had great posture and he beat me fair and square. All that I'm trying to say is that I could've performed better if my strategy and my mind set were all there.

I rushed straight forward, head on against a bull when I should've been like a Torero or Matadore and wait for the bull to come to me and then STRIKE! Take my time, pick out openings or creating my own so I can sneak a punch or kick here and there. Keep moving around my opponent as they strike, so I can see what type of fighter they are. Understand their timing better, and what they like to use in terms of combinations and preferences such as kicks or punches.

Obviously it sounds easier said then done specially when I was also lacking, before AND during my match, "Peace". By "Peace", I mean peace of mind, keeping myself calm, cool, and collected. I found that very hard to do, instead I would listen to hardcore House, Techno, and Trance music to get myself pumped up for the fight. When really I should've looked for inner peace and tranquility. I'm sure this applies to a lot of you out there, but I found that I can perform much better when I'm feeling calm and relax even when I know there's a 185lbs guy swinging huge hooks towards my face.

My gameplan this year is to achieve that type of "Inner Peace" and like I said in my previous post, I will try to achieve that by participating in more tournaments, whether they are local or provincial or whatever I will be there. I also believe that I need to "Up" to intensity of my sparring. I need to feel that fear of getting hit so that I can truly see what my true capabilities are when my emotions are taking over the bests of me. Then I will be able refine my training and truly understand what I'm doing wrong...or right, correct it or emphasize it.

P.S.: Thank you to everyone who's been by my side and helped me get out of this depression. It always feels good to know that I have great family and friends to hold me up when I'm feeling down. I love you all!

And Now That The Dust Settled...

Obviously I'm pretty bummed out about it. I feel like I've let everyone down, everyone who helped me train for this tournament, everyone who came to support me, and everyone at our school. I feel like I wasted all of my time training for this tournament as I didn't even make it to the finals.

I blame myself for this, as I know I underestimated the competition this year by comparing it with last year’s competitors. I wasn't training properly for what was to come and instead I was training according to what I knew of the prior year. Even with my girlfriend's consistent warnings that I'm slacking in my training, I chose not to listen as I believed I knew best.

Everyone has been telling me that I needed this loss to get everything back in perspective. I believe that too now, this being the first time that I've never placed in a tournament that I participated in. I guess as some say that "I was resting on my Laurels". I was too confident of my own capabilities that I felt no need to go through the same type of rigorous training as I did the last year and by doing so hindering my chances of success.

Sifu gave me some advices before my fight, which looking back at it now I wish I had followed. Instead, I did what worked for me last year during my matches and therefore the results of my current fight. What I am happy about is that I came out of it with new sparring philosophies, new thoughts and ideas that broke some of the previous ones that I had set my sparring skills on. I'm actually pretty excited to see how well they will work for me.

All in all, I haven't quite made my mind up yet on whether or not I will go back for next year's tournament. What I do know is that from now on, I will try my best to participate in every local tournament that I can. I will train according the same mindset that I had the first year and more. 

Thank you to everyone who has helped me throughout my training period and thank you to all those who sent me support. I hope with this experience, I will grow a better fighter if not at least a better teacher/coach.

2011 U.S.K.S.F. Tournament July 29 - 30

Day 1 - Weigh-In : Morning of July 29th 2011 at 2:00PM my team and I lined up for the weigh-in. Actually made some awesome friends while waiting in line from The Peaceful Dragon Kung-Fu school in Charlotte NC. After handing in my Medical Form and Lei-Tai Waiver, we went into a room where a doctor checks your blood pressure. Once we pass, we are then video taped while giving a verbal waiver of liability and death. Then our sparring equipment gets checked by the Lei-Tai officials and finally the weigh-in happens. Stripped down to my brief they weighted me at 74.3kg or 163.5lbs.

Day 2 - Fight Day : My Coach Tim, went to the coaches meeting at 10:30AM where they gather information on the fight schedule and weight division's information. There were 7 competitors in my weight division this year, which means that whoever won my match would have to spar someone who hasn't yet had a match. Total matches for 1 competitor in my weight division to get to the Gold medal would total 3 matches in one day.

I was the second match lined up in my weight division. My opponent was coincidently from Montreal, so ironically I was able to understand everything my opponent and his coach were discussing without them realizing it. It was obvious his size was much bigger then mine, it became clear when we were in line for our match and we were watching the fight going on at the moment and he said in french to his coach "Hey, this should be my weight!" when I asked the officials standing next to me what weight division that was, they told me Heavy B which is (76.1kg to 82kg). Just by looking at the guy you knew he was at least 10lbs heavier then me.

Finally the fight we were watching ended and it was now our turn to spar. It was now about 3PM, we both were introduced, then asked by the referee to step onto the platform. We bowed to the Head Masters and then to each other. I then got into my usual fighting stance making sure I keep my back hand to my cheek and my front hand a bit further away from my chest. The referee gave the signal to go and at that exact moment I quickly move forward to bridge the gap while throwing a left right combo. Both of my hits landed but as I ended my right cross, he responded also with a left right combo to the head which rocked me enough to drop my guard. Completely dazed, I lose all focus and posture and return to fighting basics...Haymakers. A lot of my strikes were blocked and responded, a lot of take down attempts where made on both sides but every time they were stuffed. I was able to avoid being pushed off the Lei-Tai this time, something I wasn't able to do last year. When the bell sounded for us to break and return to our corners, I knew he had this round. My Coach and Equipment manager did a great job keeping me ready and fit for the next match, while snapping me out of my sparring 101 techniques. Abi, my equipment manager, brought to my attention that I was swinging too much and my opponent is anticipating them, while Coach Tim was reminding me to use what I know and do best...the low sweeps. Judges call... all 5 judges awarded the round to my opponent.

The Referee calls back the fighters onto the 2 1/2 foot raised platform. Now with more self confidence and a better gameplan, I was ready to face him again. Referee signals us to go, this time he moves in to bridge the gap and throws a left right, in response I bob and weave his punches avoiding both strikes and retaliates with a right over the shoulder hook followed by a left hook. He clintches with me and decides to try a takedown. I was able to reverse it and took him down instead. Referee brought us back to our starting positions and signals the judges a succesfull takedown and a point is awarded to me. Referee then signals for us to continue. Again my opponent decides to bridge but this time with a kick. With my fighting stance, I was easily capable of anticipating his kick and caught it and responded with right cross to the face followed by a takedown attempt which was unsuccessful. He regained his posture and returned a very hard left, right combination, which again he was close enough to clinch and shoot for a takedown, after a bit of sprawling he finally succeeded in his takedown. Referee breaks us up and announces to the judges that a successful takedown was awarded to my opponent. Referee then signals us to continue, again my eager opponent moves in and i successfully avoided them by bob and weave and answered back with a right left hook. He clinches and returns a hook while in clinch, let's go of the clinch to apply more pressure with his other hand. Bell rings, we are called back to our corners. Judges call... 2 to me and 3 to my opponent.

Match was awarded to my opponent... I was certain that round should've gone to me, but unfortunately the judges didn't see it my way... so goes the story of my first loss.