Reviews

Alex 19, UK

Ni Hao!
I arrived at the Kung Fu school school on Monday evening after a long travel from the UK. But I had a good night sleep and was ready to start my training the next morning.

I never really practised Kung Fu so they showed me the 3 styles I could choose from. You just cannot learn them all.

The 3 I could choose from where: Shaolin, White Crane and Internal. I decided to do try all 3 styles, one each day to see which one I preferred.

The first day I tried Shaolin Kung Fu.  I loved Shaolin on TV, but it is without a doubt the most physically challenging. The Shaolin masters name is Jin and he is just 24 and he seemed to be a pretty harmless young guy. However, he is actually amazingly tough, he moves so quickly I wouldn't be surprised if he could punch someone before they realised he was in the room.
He obviously worked really hard to become this Kung Fu machine, he will expect blood sweat and tears from every one of his students. That day of Shaolin I had to wheelbarrow up 69 steps and crawl back down and they were covered in small sharp rocks so my hands were very soar by 7am already! He made me and the others hop up and down them on one leg (by which time I already thought I might die) then the same on the other leg, and then I had to jump up and down them. So anyways, since then my stomach, back and ribs were in loads of pain whenever I moved. Decision that Shaolin is definitely not for me!

But not to worry, maybe you are more hard core or more experienced, than it might be for you. I was going to check out 'White Crane' next. White all raised knees and flicky kicks and bent wrists... and that was pretty neat!

In the end I choose 'internal' martial arts which mostly 'Xingyi' and is all about your chi/energy. I really enjoyed it and the master Dung started teaching me 'Bagua' outside of the group whilst everyone else learned Tai Chi and everyone at the Martial arts school told me that this is an honour: it's Dung's speciality and he doesn't teach it very often.

We have to be at the school every morning at 6am, but we are off on Saturday amd Sunday. We train 6am-7.30am, 9am-10.30am, 11am-11.30am, 2.30pm-4pm and 4.30pm-5pm. It's a long hard day and the food is mostly rice and a vegetables and a little bit of meat. The breakfast is brilliant though.. egg and chips and this strange boiled bread :)