Week 29 (19 July - 25 July)

This week was my first week starting with Sanda, in the morning we ran to the bridge and back, on the way back we had to sprint up the last bit of the road which is also the steepest part of the run. The original shifu was gone so we had a new shifu that would teach us until the original shifu got back from his trip visiting his home on wednesday, personally I doubted the fact that he would return. Because Dan always has chinese class from 8:00 - 9:00 I trained alone. For warm up I had to run 10 laps of the academy ground, after some stretching this was followed by some punching exercises, I had to assume the standard sanda stance and do 50 normal punches, 50 upper cuts, 50 side and 50 over top. Afterwards I had to do 5 5 minutes sets of punching combinations with 1 minute intervals. Next I had to go outside and do 10 sprints as fast as I could over a distance of 80meters, there were no intervals. The sweat was just pouring down. For the rest of the day we just practised stances and in the evening we did some sparring which I still need to get used to, I find it difficult to hit somebody in the face if I I'm not threatened, even if it's softly.

On tuesday the weather wasn't great, it was pouring so in the morning I just went back to my room to relax until breakfast. In the morning Dan decided not to go to chinese class and Umit has also decided to join Sanda for the morning session. We had to run 15 laps inside the training hall, then we had to exercised covering the length of the training hall.

6x frog jumps
6x backwards frog jumps
6x duck walk
6x push up (push up position) jumps
6x running on all fours

afterwards we did some powerstretching.

Getting out of bed on wednesday was awful my quads were extremely painful I could barely walk but I had to run anyway. This morning Umit and Tharun were training, for warmup we had to run 8 laps of the academy grounds, then we had to stretch this was followed by 100 normal punches and 100 hook punches. Afterwards we had to do 5 2 minute punching combinations on the bags with 30 second intervals. Afterwards we had to do 40 kicks around the punching bag with each leg, this was followed by 50 side ways jumps and 20 knee high sprints. This combination of kicks, jumps and sprints had to be repeated for 5 sets. Afterwards we did some sparing and I got an elbow in the face from Tharun which caused my nose to bleed.

Thursday was my birthday and I also had to go to Siping to have my residency permit extended, Rahul also had to go. Dan also joined because it was my birthday. David also went to Siping to see a doctor, Josh, Eagle and Dimitri went just for the heck of it. I first spent 45 minutes at the ICBC bank to open an account, afterwards we went to the home affairs office which was quite efficient. Afterwards we went for lunch at the Buffet (Jeelong Harbour Cousine) the now 58RMB all you can eat buffet, I invited Dan and the translator, Dimitri, Rahul and David also joined us.

We had some good food and Rahul went crazy taking more food than he could eat and also got everybody a draft beer, I was tempted to drink but didn't. Because my legs were so painful and it was my birthday I went to the Jinlihao, Rahul joined me, everyone else went back to the academy. I just relaxed there for the entire afternoon and evening. Thomas called me and told me he can't let me hang out with Rahul on my birthday because it's just unfair so he came to the jinlihao to join me. We ended up going to 2 clubs but because we got there at about 12 everything was already closed so we just left.

Friday morning we left the Jinlihao at about 9:30 and went back to the academy, we arrived undetected so I just slept through until dinner without going to any line ups.