Training day

Training days are different depending on where we are at. At Kung Fu Home in Finland, we may choose between whatever we feel and it is easy to get drawn towards wooden dummy training. However, at our home in the Philippines, we lack the wooden dummies but have a gym close by so we end up there every morning.  There we really work out and sweat - with no air conditioning the heat and humidity add up to very wet training and consuming a truckload of Pocari Sweat and watermelons afterwards. 

We do train a bit differently since we aim to work out with our entire body and to connect all parts to our core and lower dan tien. Doing so we do not work so much with focusing on singled out muscles groups and sometimes this causes conversations. We love being able to show and tell why we work the way we do - in all exercise, we aim to be better and stronger with our martial art and we work out the way it really feels beneficial from wing chuns point of view.

A great way of finding the connection between the upper and lower body in my opinion is working with a heavy ball - I prefer working with 10-15 kg, but my dear husband loves to push my limits every now and then by adding some weight and picking a heavier ball. throwing and catching a 10 kg ball really helps to ground oneself - by remaining soft and flexible the impact is easier to ground. On the other hand, catching the ball while tensing up may throw you off from your roots and break the flow. 

Training in the heat has its ups and downs. While I love being even more flexible, we both dislike sweaty skin while punching a bag. In Finland, the surroundings do not affect the training time, but in the Philippines, one needs to monitor his/her knuckles carefully during punching bag training in order to avoid peeling skin and more so the problems that broken skin may cause (One being not able to train for a while). I do love to watch my husband train with a heavy punching bag, no matter what he works on. His punches and kicks draw attention, as does his attitude towards training. He is killing the bag - REALLY! And it gets noticed. People seem curious about the power behind punches and kicks. His answer keeps repeating itself - he always says that his motor is Wing Chun and the other important part is intention. 

And I know this to be true - we were training stick fighting and even I was only keeping the time and holding the punching bag while he was training, the intention in his eyes and energy in his body changed everything around us. The mood in the room was so intense our students dare not come even close to our training venue at Kung Fu Home where the only sound was the stick beating the bag. When my husband trains he does so with his heart... I do too, BUT sometimes my heart likes to flip it into loving mode when I try to keep it in stealth making me less deadly and more fun.