Week 48 (29 November - 5 December)

sunrise at 7am last Sunday

Monday was extremely cold the first real double digit minus weather. After morning line up it was -12 Celsius and because of all the ice we did our warm up in the training hall. The training hall was empty as there were only 5 foreign students at the academy, others had gone home for christmas or gone traveling. Training was hard, warming up took a while but once that was done we had to carry each other in circles around the training hall.

6 laps of piggyback carrying
6 laps carrying in front
6 laps on shoulder
2 laps front upright

In the afternoon we had a long warm up followed by kicking and punching the bags for 10 1 minute intervals. The first few are always fine but after a while it just becomes extremely tiring. Below is a video of the 6th interval.



By Tuesday it had warmed up a bit and it was "only" -5 so at 5:30am we went for our morning run despite not being able to see much. For our 8am morning training we went for our long warm up run, the entire lake had frozen up.

After getting back we had to do different punches and kicks in mid air.
400 jabs + straight punches
400 upper cuts
400 hook
200 knee variations
400 side kicks


By the afternoon we were very tired so we went for a walk out in the cold. During the evening session we just did some stomach exercises.

 

The ski resort behind the academy

Wednesday morning felt warm as the temperature was now only 5 Celsius and the ground was extremely slippery during our 5:30am run. For the 8am training we had to just kick the bags for 45 minutes after this Liu Shuai (chinese guy) and I had to kick each other for 60 minutes.

In the afternoon we just did some weights and in the evening we did some punching on the bags.

 

sick kids resting in the training hall

After the showers my whole upper body was sore from both muscle and impact pain.


At 5:30 on Thursday there was a huge snow storm outside so we did our warm up inside the training hall. For morning training we had to do 12 x 30 leg raise sit ups, 8 x 50 back extensions and 8x 30 push ups. In the afternoon all students had a line up and were told that we would need to shovel snow, however the foreigners could choose between training or shoveling snow, we all ended up shoveling snow.

Chinese kid not looking happy (left) - 1:30hr later with our home made snowplows

On Friday morning is was -15 Celsius and we went for our 10km run, it was pretty though because every few minutes we had to removed the frost and ice from our eyebrows and eyelashes, my contact lenses also kept drying up.

Temperature gauge reading -15.1C (left) -  Clear skies just make things colder (right)

 

after the 10km run

The weekend wasn't that eventful but the academy cook did make us some really good food which was a pleasant change. On Saturday I went for a short walk and on Sunday I did some washing, other than I just slept and relaxed.