Old Friends and New

In between parties spent a little time hanging out with (Sam) Deng Zhen of USA  Kung-fu Academy, they moved to a new location on Park St in Alameda.  Sam I met in 1994, when he competed in CMAT and won the Wushu Grand Championship......he had just left the Sichuan Wushu Team at the time.  Now, he has finished his degree in computer science and is running his own wushu school!  With out doubt I am always impressed with the athletes from China...they always strive to do their best in whatever field they choose.  When one thinks of the benefits of learning wushu one of the the things often overlooked is the confidence it develops in you....you will always be prepared to take on life, adversity and difficulty do not deter you from your goals.  Also, met one of his new instructors Coach Jiang for dinner spent some time with him discussing the direction of Wushu.  In China, he said things are progressing in the direction of gymnastics..........stand up and now I do my run of jumps and twists.........so unlike the continuous techniques of wushu.  In doing this they are leaving the rest of the world behind.......no one has the facilities or the training to keep up.........he said in China if you don't keep up with the changes in a short time your techniques are out of date!!  What does that mean for the rest of us??  Sam also pointed out that China has professional athletes and the rest of the world does not, making competition at this moment pointless.  We did agree on the fact that the road for US Wushu students should be to master the basics................Americans, though like to jump and to do fancy movements but lack the stance work and power to bring out the characteristics of wushu....that plus the fact that Americans have so many distractions and other alternatives, often Wushu can only take a small part of their lives, making it difficult to produce high quality athletes. 

Deng Zhen(lft) and Jiang Xinghui (rt) invied me out to East Ocean Resturant for dinner.It is probably the best Chinese Resturant in Alameda.....dinner included Lobster, Southern version of the Peking Duck( Pipa Style), deep fried fish and peapod leaves.....yummy!!

Also, I stopped by to watch the students train at Sam's School. Coach Zhang is one of the school's recent instructor's from China......he has nice jumps and proved to be a versatial Coach.  The students did conditioning ,sword, Chen Taiji, a little nandu training and long fist all in one lesson!

Some of the student's of USA Kung-fu.

After dinner I spent some time at Sam's school and watched the students train. I had time to discuss the training for some of our mutual students....as some of their students are now at CalWushu and we need them to get up to speed to compete in the Collegiates in March.  I told Sam and his instructors I thought they were wise to choose Alameda as there is no competition....in SouthBay we now have the largest concentration of Wushu Schools.  Another positive thing is their location, it is in an area where the economy is pretty good still, so you can recruit new students.  Sooner or later the economy will unfortunately affect our industry as martial arts is usually discretionary spending and often is first thing to go when times are hard. Try as we might we can't escape the crumbling economy........can we get a bail out!? 

Ah,well another time for that thought!! 

Happy Holidays to everyone!!  If you haven't done your shopping now is the time....biggest price cuts are right now!!  Hehe....cya all!!