4 months September 1st, 2007 - December 21, 2007

Mohammed Khaku

I spent four months at the academy training from September till the end of December. I can honestly say it has been the most different, difficult and best experience I have ever had.

Pushing yourself to your physical limits almost on a daily basis was a completely alien idea to me at first. Like many others I entered the academy with no real experience in martial arts and I had no idea what to expect. After a little time I realized that “Kun Yu Mountain Shaolin Martial arts academy” are less of a school and more of a way of life. Whether it is pushing yourself to get out of bed for Qi gong at 6 am in the morning, accepting the pain of power stretching for the definite benefits, putting in extra training where you realize short-comings or even braving sparring just to see what happens against certain opponents, all of it contributes to a great training experience which is really a great test of your nerves and determination. I felt free to push myself further than I ever thought possible and with the help of my master and other students and I leave with the rewards which I hope to build on long after today.

In my first few weeks here one of the older students told me that any day one does not end in pain was probably a waste of a day and I now fully agree with him, you need to work hard to get better and over time you will.

In many ways the people here are what makes the experience good or bad and I was lucky enough to meet some very good friends here who helped create an atmosphere in training where we stretched ourselves to our limits and outside where it was fun just to hang out. Some days at the academy are not easy such as where you may have an injury or you have a bad training day so friends help and hopefully inspire. The masters also take very good care of their students, if there is a problem they are always there and willing to help in any way they can. In terms of training my master, Master Du, always identified what the class wanted to do or was lacking in (usually the same thing) and had us all practice that and he put in extra times on students outside of class many times if they needed it.