The Contender Asia

Haha, just kiddin! I am not going to try to get into any sort of professional fighting… haha, but lately since I got back to the the states, I have been doing a good bit of mma / san shou training. In general been working out pretty intensely. I am going to be honest. I love love love wushu but while training and preparing for US Team Trials and for the World Wushu Championships, there was an indescribable pressure. I don’t really know where this pressure came from, because everyone was very supportive and positive, but it’s sort of a weight you put on yourself and a weight of high expectations from those around you. So anyways, point is that pressure combined with the fact that I trained the same 3 forms for roughly 2 years straight made me dread practicing.

Now that I have done what I set out to do, it’s like I have opened the doors and allowed myself to move on to the next level. I have a renewed passion for training and martial arts lately because I am now focusing on other styles and areas of martial arts that I previously held back from!

I’ve been training san shou with former US Wushu Team member Jason Yee. He is awesome! He is the only guy to do both taolu AND san shou at a world championships, he brought home the US’s first medal (bronze in sanshou), and went on to fight Cung Le on pay per view. (Check out his clip – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laeghrc6ibE)

So since I’ve gotten back to LA I have been doing a bunch of various martial arts training: sparring drills, bag work, acrobatics, wushu forms, workin on a drunken hand form, fight choreo, and weight training.

Again, the whole contender asia and UFC is just me messing around, but I am having a good time learning san shou and boxing techniques.

Now as for everything else – I have been gone from my home in LA for a good 3 months now and I had a TON of misc things to take care of when I got back from catching up on 3 months of mail, paying bills, cleaning the house, unpacking, restocking, processing orders on my businesses, organizing my personal and business finances, to meetings with friends and biz partners.. lots to catch up on!

My To Do List For This Week

1) Get Quickbooks / Finish sorting biz finances
2) Mail out Demo Reels
3) Call contractor to fix patio

In this part of the journey we go to Kao Hsiung a southern part of Taiwan. Sarah has a business training session while Kevin and I go meet my old friend Bruce! Meanwhile on the way back from visiting Bruce in Ping Tung we drop by the 2009 World Games Coliseum and national training center of all the Taiwan national teams. This includes the national wushu team of taiwan as well as their other Olympians for all sports including gymnastics, swimming, track, and so on.

(stay posted for the super secret Ping Tung part of the trip where everything goes and no restraints are kept at all)

A little personal wushu reflection in this next video.

As I overlook the vast empty stage of the 2009 World Games Coliseum at night, I am forced to reflect on my growth and development in wushu. I came to Taiwan to train wushu for 2 weeks about 7 years ago. I return now in 2009 as a respected equal training with their national team.

Notice how there is no one in both videos! I get bored training by myself.. so I start to record things or keep myself entertained somehow.

I figure I should at least post a vid of me doing something. Here I am a few weeks back doing a jump outside 540 at the end of my practice. I already took my shoes off, but decided to do a few more kicks for the heck of it.

Yesterday I trained SO much that I probably inverted time and space and went into another dimension where I was training myself because I trained so much. I probably even regressed in skill because I trained so much yesterday.

I went to train at NWTC (National Wushu Training Center) in Hollywood and as usual it was just an alfred on alfred training session. It went surprisingly well though because I had a game plan when I went there to train. I had a few things I really wanted to work on and I just didn’t leave until I finished all of them. On top of that I threw in a full form and a few half sections for endurance. I probably ended up staying there for close to 5 hours. All I know is when I got there, it was bright, when I left there was no light.

While on the topic of NWTC, I spoke to Eric Chen, the owner of the school and also someone I worked with on Spike TV’s Deadliest Warrior… and he mentioned that the original intention of the school had always been to be a training center for the US Team. It could be a place for them to meet up together for a couple weeks before international tournaments and train with coaching and it could be a central location with proper training carpet. According to Eric, the powers that be didn’t agree with this. (He said this was many years ago and since NWTC has developed into a more Hollywood and stunt industry positioned center)

Having just discovered this though, it definitely made me think that we should get something going for the future teams where they can all meet up for 2-3 weeks prior to World Games and all fly out together as a team. It would be nice to develop a bond with the entire US team aside from just the few days you see each other at the tournament. Also currently the US team (or US team parents.. lol) pays for all their travel expenses and competition expenses with the exception of Tiger Claw / Kung Fu Magazine which has been gracious enough to sponsor some teams expenses and team jackets. Gathering money to sponsor 10 team members should not be a hard thing if everyone rallied together under a central wushu organization. I know that some schools in California alone have decent connections with colleges, corporations, and the entertainment industry. If our federation could work in harmony with all the wushu schools who support the art and our national team I think a few companies could definitely sponsor the team. It would be a few dollars to them (the large corporations) and mean so much for team members. It would also add more prestige and sense of pride making the sport grow and making new athletes that much more interested. It’s a win win situation. If the sport grows the athletes feel more inspired and respected and the schools or corporations with financial or community interest have a bigger piece of the pie to market to.

That’s my schpeal on that.

Then since I was in Hollywood for training I dropped by my buddies place and we went to Les Deux. I was a good boy of course and didn’t drink or do anything your grandma wouldn’t do- in other words I sat and just chatted with some friends. Especially 2 weeks before my competition I am not going to do anything. I haven’t been eating anything greasy like pizza or burgers.. no ice cream.. no alcohol.. no nothing. Eat, sleep, vitamins, training, other dimension training, and internet work is what I do.

Oh. I do however have a funny story involving this person.

Illegal hot dogs

There are always delicious smelling street dogs which satiate drunk people’s appetites quite well at the end of a good night of partying. However in this case the police officer in the back was doing his job of destroying this cart of defecated goodies by pouring mayonnaise and ketchup all over the hot dogs – almost just looks like hes cooking them (The police officer said they shut these carts down for health reasons because he has seen people defecate and then start cooking hot dogs). Jen was giving him shit I believe and saying they could feed the homeless (or me!).. instead of throwing it away to which he replied that the city could get sued if a bum got sick off the hot dogs. He also said “Where does Mayonnaise belong?… In the fridge!” .. as he poured it all over the cart.

Anyways, that wasn’t even my main story.

So I run into Jen the next day at Les Deux and she is a little tipsy and I started to SARCASTICALLY say “hey, im drunk”. As I mentioned earlier, I was not drinking at all because of my competition.. but in her drunken state she did not detect my sarcasm and she said something to the effect of “you are such a liar, you are terrible at pretending to be drunk” so then i said “let me pretend to be drunk then” so i started to pretend to be drunk.. you know- stumbling around and all that. Then I got a little carried away and sorta knocked over all these cups at the bar while the bartender was trying to make a drink.. she freaked out and called the bouncers to kick me out. Instantly it became a scene out of Bourne Identity where I was dodging and evading bouncers while trying to covertly escape and blend in with the other party-ers. I spent part of the night almost getting kicked out and trying to hide out from the crime scene, but I must say it was fun.