Thursday, January 10, 2008

Austria Level 3

Last night we got our first taste of Austria's Level 2 class. Man oh man oh man..... These guys train HARD. Not to say they train harder than we do, just differently, and they work really hard on crazy explosive chi, especially in jumps.

Class started fairly familiar but soon they were doing several different moves that Yi taught them. One example was a lunbi caijiao into a fanyao into a ground slap another lunbi caijiao then into a pubu. Another was a lunbi caijiao intou a housaotui. And then a lunbi caijiao into a waibaitui then the beginning of pubu chuangzhang 3 times. I felt like a special kid trying to figure these out. They also did familiar stuff differently. During liyu dating after they land on their back they do a 180 sideways flip, do pushups, then another 180 flip then the kip up then headflip. Craziness. I felt special again as I am still trying to just get the kip up. I will try to get a video. Of them, not me.

During stretching De made new friends by teaching them all straddle. They were scared but loved it by the end.

Then it was time for second half jump-o-rama. These guys left us all behind. Their jumps are crazy high and crazy powerful. They do backflips like it's nothing. They all train the aerial. Their tornadoes are crazy high. There was one part where they stacked these bricks up like a ramp and we were supposed to run up it and attempt an aerial off. De and Richu went at it like champs but I could barely get the rhythm right just to get the jump take off. There was no way I could pretend to try the aerial, I would have cracked my skull on those bricks. I have to try it next time though no matter what; gotta represent.

We never got around to forms. Apparently their classes are pretty different every time. But I think the main difference is they train jumps and gymnastic stuff the way we train forms It's not harder or better either way, it's just different. And different is always fun.

Ohhhhhh, AND they had music playing the whole time. Madness. When "Eye of the Tiger" came on I started laughing, remembering our dorktastic karaoke last week. Miss everyone at USAST, but can't wait to come back bearing mad Austrian skills.

4 comments:

  1. WOW! Sounds like our Austria brothers and sisters have MAD aerial and jumping chi!! That's awesome! We should start a class like that over here too!!! So we can do like a triple in one day. L1, Aerial class, then go to L2! :D

    As for the music, that sounds like a fun idea. Most gyms play music to keep the energy up. But I dunno how I feel about it personally. Although it's great to get the chi up, I would rather get the chi up on my own than hearing a song and my chi goes up. In real life, when I need the chi, there's not going to be some magic elf that pops out of the ground with a boombox blaring "Eye of the Tiger." Hmmm...that might be a cute USB device that I could design and sell.... :D

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  2. i forgot there was music eventually and it just kinda was in the background with the rhythm of everything else.

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  3. Yeah the music kind of faded out of my notice until we started jumping. Then it kind of messed up my counting steps on my takeoff. But that's just an excuse for how weak my jumping was... :P

    oh yeah, they do a ton of handstands here also. At the end we did more and i just couldn't get up. Finally the guy training next to me helped me get my leags up against the wall and I ended up falling on my head because my arms buckled and gave out. Gotta get more arm chi.

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  4. You know, I was thinking about the music thing and how sometimes Shifu would have music on before class. It does add some background chi to the mix. Maybe it would be nice to try out?

    What do you think Shifu would say if we asked him if we could play music throughout class? What if it was the heart sutra that Hui recorded of Shifu with the hiphop beats? :)

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