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

Goodluck Card from my coworkers

I come home at who knows when last night after a session of training and being stuck in traffic in the rain and other errands to find a nice little treat from my former colleagues at City National Bank.

I opened it up to find the following:

Inside of wushu goodluck card

If you cant read what the actual card says – it says
“May the future
hold not only
dreams come true
and much success
But all that means
the most to you
and gives you
happiness!”

Very touching! Even though its a Hallmark card =P I really think the message inside touches me at this point in my life. I am going to the World Wushu Championships.. something I have always wanted to do since I was 15 and after that I still want to continue to pursue my other dreams… so anyways, I think it’s a great message. Thanks guys!

Also inside the wonderful gift bag was this!

Asian Fortune Cat

I mean.. I always say that I am a pretty lucky guy, but with this LUCKY FORTUNE CAT.. my luck is going to be ridiculous. I will probably slip on a piece of gold and then my head will land on a pile of money to catch my fall and then a wealthy business mogul will say.. just have it for being at the right place at the right time! =) Thanks wealthy business mogul!

There were also some oranges/citrus in the bag which Leah says is good luck to poker players.. I think we all know what oranges look like so I did not take a picture of the oranges.. but just wanted to mention that they were in fact there.

I have placed my fortune cat on my bookshelf for now, but will be bringing him with me to nor cal for added luck and motivation. Again, I want to say thanks guys because its moments like these that I am so glad I am pursuing what I love to do. It re-affirms that I should be doing this whole joblessness thing… and now I gotta run to meet up with an agent and then train and then drive up north. Ciao!

Fortune cat on bookshelf

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.

I got an email today from an editor for MASTERS magazine (http://www.mastersmag.com). Apparently my article and interview is out on newsstands for their winter edition. =) I think this is the first magazine where I have a featured section.

Alfred Hsing Masters Magazine Winter 09

I am getting mailed a copy soon so I actually haven’t even had a chance to read the actual article yet. I hope I didn’t say anything too ridiculous. This was actually done BEFORE I made the US Wushu Team so I don’t think I had a chance to talk about Worlds or training for team trials. Dan Inosanto (Game of Death, Big Trouble Little China) is on the cover I believe.

I also received the photo shoot pictures from my Kung Fu Magazine shoot. I posted up a few proofs last time, but here are some of the good ones. I don’t think these have been posted in kung fu magazine yet… and this jump straight sword one is my favorite so I’m posting the higher res version!

Alfred Kung Fu Magazine

Hammerfist!

Aside from those magazines, I trained straight sword and spear full forms today. I played around with 2 small combos that I might fix up in my spear form, but basically it will be the same form as during team trials. I also changed my brake pads and worked on some martial arts nutrition research. Now I am going to eat. Ciao!

No new updates lately because I’ve just been training… but I guess that’s worth blogging about.

Not too long after Elivers birthday, I flew up north. I’ve been in nor cal ever since. Training started off slow, but now I am training pretty intensely up here. It’s nice to be at home and not have to worry about finding my next meal (because I am at home and my mom is cooking for me! ftw!). Also I am able to practice on “official” green wushu carpet.

All those good aspects aside, I’ve come to realize I still end up training by myself wherever I go. The only place I’m able to train at with a good atmosphere and high level training teammates is with Tiff, Bryan, Stephanie, Kelly in Fremont… but then its hella far and not on regulation wushu carpet. I guess this is really as good as it gets in the US. I guess its unfair that I compare training situations in the US to China training conditions where you wake up and WALK to the training hall, you get meals prepared for you at the dining halls, you train with the best in the world, and you get coaches pushing you with detailed instructions on the latest wushu rules and techniques.

I started off this week doing random sections. Few days back, I went to Cao Yue’s grand opening demo for his new school “Silicon Valley Wushu.” He had a short class after and we played soccer then did a ton of basics, which is great and all but not great for me because I was so sore it was hard to practice what I needed to practice for competition. Took me about 2 days just to be able to safely btwist. Then  2 days ago I did my cq and ss full forms. Yesterday I did spear and ss full forms for my second practice. Hopefully I’ll do one full form today and then rest Fri and Sunday.

As for non wushu related stuff, I havent done much… I hung out with Eric and Alvin in downtown sj on the weekend; I kicked it at Dave and Busters with Eric and Hue; and I had some boba with Bryan and Tiff a few times after practice.

I’ve dedicated about 12 years to wushu, I guess I can do 1 more month of hardcore training.

Wednesday was all about Wushu and more Wushu.

WushuKicks
I had some large orders come in which I had to personally help process. The single largest order we ever had came in the week I made the US Team. From now on June 21 is going to be my second birthday. lol
Had a talk with Adam about taking our products/service/investment to the next level. Been too busy with training, but maybe this month I will sit and think about this. I also have a site revamp in the back of my mind, but its one of those things that I will have to really sit down and spend 2 good full days on without any distractions.. and right now if I have a good 4 hours even I’d be lucky.

Also had an idea to have WushuKicks help or co-sponsor the US Wushu Team Jackets this year. I’ll have to talk to Tiger Claw who usually sponsors us.. but It’d be nice to have some super pimp warm up jackets.

WUSHU SPONSORSHIP
I have 2 goals. I was talking to my friend who is on the taekwondo national team and his organization takes care of all their travel, housing, and expenses to their World Championships in October.

The US Wushu Team’s travel expenses should be covered for World Championships this October. We spend all this time, effort, and money to make the team. Only 5 girls and 5 guys in the US make it. The least our federation could do is try to organize some sponsorship or fundraising in our name. Instead they leave it up to the individuals to do their own fundraising. Granted taekwondo is a more well known sport- Their previous national team even received a salary while they were on the team so that they could focus on training. Anyways, my goal is to at least fundraise to cover travel expenses.

My second goal is if I can get a major donation or sponsor.. I would quit my job and go to China from now until team trials and train my ass off for World Games. Otherwise, I’ll have to grind 9-5 and then drag myself to train after work like I have been doing. It’s do-able, but its very mentally draining to train after work.

One thing that was a slight bummer was that Jackie Chan came to visit Jack Tu’s school (where I train part of the week and used to help coach) and do that concert in LA on Monday. I was too busy making the US Wushu Team – not that I would ever trade my accomplishments to have been in LA, but its ironic that the one Monday I’m not in LA, he’s here. (If you don’t know the back story Jackie Chan and Jet Li are my childhood icons. I met Jet Li already, but there were 3 separate occasions where Jackie Chan was literally within arms reach but I just missed him.)