I am a week away from going to Thailand. I am very excited about going. I am planning to do a lot of training while I am there. I will be training in Muay Thai and Krabi Krabong (Thai Weapons Art). I will be training at Sitsongpeenong for Muay Thai and Pramote Gym Buddhai Sawan for Krabi Krabong. I am also planning on going to 13 Coins, Kaewsamrit , Sityodtong and possibly Por Pramuk to check out their training.

I will be posting updates on my facebook page and hopefully here on this blog.

As I continued my Karate training, my search for a hidden Kung Fu Master continued. Every time I went to a Chinese Restaurant I would talk to the waiters or staff about Kung Fu, hoping one of them were or knew a Kung Fu Master. Being young and naive I thought all older Chinese Men were hidden Kung Fu Masters. I was obsessed with learning Kung Fu. I would buy any instructional Kung Fu books or videos (that I could afford). I would sit there everyday, practice a few sections at a time and try to perfect them.

I would supplement my "training" by watching Kung Fu Movies. My all time favorite Kung Fu movie is called "36th Chamber" (AKA. "The Master Killer") with Gordon Liu. What I really liked most about this movie was all of the unique and different training situations and equipment used in the movie. For the most part, I tried doing every training situation that was portrayed in this movie...I have to say, some of them are not the smartest things to try. But I did it anyway!

The first one I tried was balancing on a barrel and jumping to another one. Well, I didn't have a barrel but I did have buckets. I would try rolling two buckets, jump on one and then jump to the other one. Anyhow, I wasn't the best at jumping from one bucket to the next, so I wrote it off as sub-standard training equipment and not the real thing like in the movie.

The next training idea was putting weights on a long stick and swinging it into a gong (tree for me). Actually, I got pretty good at this one! Since I was getting so good at this one, I figured I was on my way to becoming a Kung Fu Master so I moved on.

My next session was carrying buckets of water with knives attached under my arms, so if I dropped my arms I would poke myself and lift the buckets higher. My version was buckets (plastic ones) and sticks duck taped under my arms. I didn't really like taking the duck tape off my arms, so I stopped this one.

The next training idea was to put burning incense on each side of my face and watch a moving candle with my eyes without moving my head. This was a tough one. I wasn't that talented of a woodworker to make what was needed...so I didn't do it!

The last training idea was to hang small punching bags with sand and practice head butting them. Maybe not the best thing to do, but I actually got pretty good at this (only side effect was a headache). I would hit the bag with the side of my head, my forehead and the top of my head by doing a running flying head butt. Like I said I was good at this one, I have always had a hard head (literally) but my headaches were getting worse, so I stopped doing that.

I would have to say as a kid I was a very dedicated, innovative and hard working Martial Artist. I had a lot of talent but I lacked the disciplined hard training found in a formal school to turn natural talent into greatness.

Tags: Martial Arts Training