johnwang wrote:windwalker wrote:We had some "visitors" Mike, the shifu feeling they where from
one of the local chinese gangs. Had us remain in our horse stance,
usually done for 20 min prior to our normal training.
This time we remained in it until they left, almost an hour...guess they got board.
When I was in high school during the 3 months summer vacation, we trained in an elementary school school yard. A group of local gang members came and watched us. We all stopped open hand training and started to train double edges sword, single edge knife, long staff, spear, and Guan Dao. After that day, that group local gang never came back.
Years back(in Sweden) our teacher where teaching in the park. A couple of us students had arrived a little early and practiced on our own.
A gang of tough guy youngsters spotted us and came forward. They had seen some of the younger guys practicing these ‘Wushu’ jumping kicks, the tough ones mockingly laughed and questioned the efficiency of it all..they where ignored.
Then they turned to me who were a little older, and asked -“and you, what can you do?”
“Well let’s see” and then I did a short most basic Wushu’ed Taolu, in proper form and fali.....when finished they stood silent for a second or so, then one of them said - “that was pretty cool” and then they left..(now this was in Sweden, where it might have been more civilized in the past
)
This was in the summer, so quite many peoples in the park chilling or whatever. On one occasion our teacher pulled off an Sword form which he seldom did, and that pulled off spontaneous cheering and applauds from people around.
It was impressive, he was like an whirlwind, and he was high up in the air and next in a deep stance, just to spring up again....Yeah,you know how those Wushu guys do! Fantastic athleticism.
He never trained with weight equipments just his own body weight. As young in the Sports college in his hometown, he said the practice was grueling, a lot of “abnormal” stretching and a lot of stance practice with a big focus on handstand and then lots of techniques repeating over and over.