Week 6 - a hard week

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When I say that this week has been a hard one, in many ways it's been no harder training-wise than any other week. What has made this week tough is the sudden change in weather.
In the UK I'm used to Spring coming on fairly gradually. Last week, it was snowing, the trees and bushes in the farmland surrounding the academy looked worryingly bare and dead and I still wore several layers to train in. Roll on this week, and we've had temperatures that rarely fell below 22 degrees C, the plant life has erupted into beautiful blossoms and greenery, and we've been absolutely sweltering. This is pretty much as hot as British summers get, and it's the first taste of Spring here. I'm kind of glad I'm not staying here for the summer.
Wong Shifu has for the most part decided that our group should be the one training out in the scorching heat, and very occassionally gives us a break for water and to dunk our heads under the outside tap (during this break he shouts "FASTER!") This has made this week's training indescribably exhausting. For the most part I have been going to bed between 8 and 9pm on a weeknight so I get plenty of sleep and am up for Tai Chi and Qi Gong at 5.30am. This week I've been unable to keep my eyes open later than 7.30pm. I'm hoping that this is just a transitional thing and my body will get used to the weather soon enough.
At the start of this week, Wong Shifu was watching Catherine and me stumble over a few applications and suggested we practice a lot as we'd be grading in these. Not without some panic, we asked when, and he said next month. This suggested to me that he didn't know that I was leaving at the end of this month...so that afternoon after training I told him that I was only staying for another 2 weeks. It's frequently weird talking through a translator as so much of what anyone says is conveyed in their tone and the translators say everything fairly without emotion, but there was no mistaking the somewhat hurt tone in Wong Shifu's voice as he said that he thought I was around for another month. It was somewhat touching - I felt bad to be leaving, and a part of me wanted to stay rather disappoint him.
On Thursday I had a bit of a rubbish day - I couldn't seem to do anything right. Firstly we had acrobatics, which we've never done before due to the fact that Wong Shifu's back hurts too much during the cold weather for him to demonstrate anything. I was RUBBISH at acrobatics. Not to say everyone else was brilliant - they weren't by a long stretch and Wong Shifu spent most of the lesson laughing at us - but they were a damn sight better than me, who kept landing awkwardly on my ankle and falling over. About half way through Wong Shifu said in a confused tone that he'd read in a book that 90% of Western children did acrobatics. I honestly have no idea where he got that statistic from. The closest we got at school was rolling down the big hill in summer, and that was hardly Shaolin stuff...
Power Training was interrupted by a long Tai Chi form by Sarah which had its own special grading as she left this weekend. In a way this was good, as the wheelbarrow this week revealed a sharp nagging pain in my left elbow, which is a hangover from a fall I had about 2 weeks ago when I was practicing sweeps - it still doesn't seem to have healed. In another way it was bad, as Wong Shifu decided we hadn't had enough time to train properly, so we had to do extra power training on Friday afternoon.
Power stretching went with barely a hitch but many a cry of agony - shifu stretched my right (previously tendon torn) leg, thinking that the one he'd injured was my left. Never mind - it did no harm and my right seems to be all better now anyway. Catherine and I also learned the end of the Tombei form, which is excellent as I'm grading it next week. It ends with a tornado kick on the spot, which I need to work on... Extra power training on Friday though was tough. We went up to the mountain along with the rest of the academy for the weekly mountain run, and Wong Shifu had us all do 30 press ups and then sent us for a timed run up and down the mountain - the boys being given 5 minutes and the girls being given 7 and a half minutes. This mountain run is essentially about 200-300 very steep steps, which I find all but impossible to run. I did my best, but ended up walking as fast as I could and taking 2 steps at a time whenever my quads could take it. I ran back down, being as careful as I could. I came last of everyone, which does not surprise me, and I didn't ask what my time was. Sometimes, you just don't want to know. I was given 20 more press ups and 20 leaps in the air to do before we were sent off on our second run up and down - the annoying thing about being so slow being less recovery time. This time was distinctly more difficult. When I reached the bottom we were sent back up for a third time, and my heartbeat was so loud in my ears that it was practically all I could hear. When people asked how I was as they passed me I tended to say "My shifu's trying to kill me" in between gasps for breath, either that or "When you start fantasising about falling and cracking your head open rather than carrying on, is that the time to stop?"
The third time we reached the bottom, Shifu told us to do it once more, but to bear crawl down - bear crawling is where you walk on your hands and feet with your bottom waving in the air. I found this fourth climb the hardest, but managed to maintain a steady stagger up to the top, where I attempted a bear crawl.
Bear crawls are possibly the most horrible exercise invented. It's almost all upper body when heading downhill, focussing on your shoulders and upper back. This pathway was also covered in sharp stones, twigs and generally wasn't made to be walked on with hands. Very few things at this place have utterly defeated me, but I'll admit this is one of them. Overall I did about half the route in a bear crawl - I walked the rest. By the time I got to the bottom, I was so glad it was the weekend I could have cried. Sometimes you just need the time off.

Somehow I think I make this blog seem like life here is about interminable suffering and pain, and while there's a lot of pain (I was talking to people this week about the point where being in pain becomes the norm here) it's also a lot of fun, and I spent most of the sessions with an exhausted grin on my face. I've taken more from being here than I ever expected, and while I'm looking forward to getting to Japan to see Faye, I am sad to be leaving Kunyu Shan so soon. 2 months of training every day seems like a very long time on paper, but in practice it passes in the blink of an eye.

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