One of the more important experiences at a KF school is the practice with your classmates outside of class. At my last school, they usually partitioned out the parking lot so people could work on their individual skills and have private lessons with their instructor, since there was often no space actually inside the school once group classes got going. So people would be practicing with weapons, doing forms, doing physical conditioning, maybe other group classes would be doing their thing. While I was there, I was part of a small group of people who tended to go to class at the same time, who had all started at around the same time, who had somehow lasted until blue sash level. So what we'd do outside of class is we'd run together, do drills on the heavy bags, focus-mitt work, work on the thai pads, do reaction drills, put on the gloves and work on technique, do some HIIT-like workouts, etc. Guess who did better during sparring? The people who worked out with us, mostly. It was VERY helpful at the time. What were your experiences with 'outside the class' time spent at your KF school? Good? Bad? Good AND Bad? I really miss it, since my current KF school's not open before or after class, and my classmates live relatively far from me.
I wish some of my friends would wanna train more often, especially Josh (who never picks up his calls) and some other guys I know who train different styles. God everyone is so busy, meh, at least I have the gym to train weekly....
I do wish more students would get together outside of class. 3 or 4 students if they cannot train outside could rent a hall for a few pounds each, but there is so much student apathy now I find. Martial Arts for many now is just a once a week hobby, like going to the snooker hall or swimming. Many clubs (ours included) put on extra training, inter-club seminars, sparring days and the like (often at the students request) only to find them phoning up the day before to cancel because their pushbike has a puncture or the cat has a cold. I fully understand that it is not high up on everyone's list to train 3-4 times a week, but for those training once a week one more lesson would go a long way, it would raise the level in the entire class. So to the OP, Fish and Infrazael you are to be applauded for your training attitude. We could all do with some more students like you.
It's funny, a friend started renting a hall for the sake of a place to meet up and go over basics, which we all need to work on. It was never intended as anything more than meeting up with friends to work on specific stuff but sometimes the football guys who use the room before him asked about joining in. He was telling his teacher about it and asked what should he do about it and was told to teach them. Now it's a class. From humble beginnings, eh? Need another night of the week to meet up for "outside of class" training now lol
That is how I started. I was training under my current Instructor and teaching a guy from work in my garden. Winter came so I rented a hall to avoid the cold and the rest is history.
A number of years ago, when a fellow kung fuer mate of mine got his house, he spent time converting his garage into a mini gym, complete with weights bench, punch bag and a small ring (very, very small ring). Some of us would train in there and thus was born "Garage-Fu". We also used to train in a car park, using each parking bay as a "ring" and taking in turns, one of us would progress through the bays sparring with the "owner" of that particular bay. I used to love outdoor training. Once upon a time we would go fell running before kung fu and we also used the "moat" by the West Wall (medieval ruins next to China Town) to do shuttle runs, spar, and we'd hang off the footbridge doing inverted crunches. Good times. Sadly, as we got older, other priorities take over and "out of school training" became the talk of myths and legends...
I always try to get classmates to train more, as we only have a Sunday class and other people work etc. Unfortunatly as everyone works different shifts its difficult. Sometime we do it and get really good work outs. Our forms would suffer a bit but techniques and drillings get a lot better.
For us, Sunday classes were traditionally hardcore, closed door and for seniors only. Now we're having to open up for all, as some people can't make it on the weekday classes...
about 5 of us train at my house usually on saturdays morning, for about 2/3 hours I always invite other people from the class but they dont seem to like training a bit more wild.
