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Siuyuat is a friend of a few of us at Wulin, and he is currently training in China pretty much full time, for a few months. He has been keeping a blog in facebook, and has allowed me to share it here on our site

They are quite long, but very interesting reads. I'm presenting them here in full glory:
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My Experiences in Tianjin!
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12:02am Sunday, Mar 9
Hi guys I hope you guys all get this and I hope I am doing the write thing for you to all get this. I arrived on saterday afternoon and there had just been a dust storm so at 3 oclock in the afternoon it was already getting dark. However where I am living at the moment is on the outskirts of the city Tianjin. The training here is INSANE! Sorry jeff but your aerials SUCK compared to some of the 6 year old kids here. Believe me the kids are NUTS i saw some 7 and 8 year olds kicking faster than Mr Guo. There jiebengong is just awsome. At the moment I am training with the proffesional team. At present we get up at 5:30 in the morning on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays to do a 5km warm up run and then do some stretching. After we are ready we start doing sprints, interval training and other plyometric exercises. We do all of this exercise in 2 thermals + a rain jacket + a puffer jacket cause its still freezing cold. We finish all thius at about 7:00 to go to breakfast which normally consists of rice porridge and some bao/ white dumplings (plain). I then normally have about an hours rest before I go to training with the schools proffesional wushu team at 8:45. We always start with the warm ups and then we play chasing games for about 10-15 minutes. We then do stretching. I swear that half of the people in the proffesional team could bvecome contortionists as most of them do hyper splits both side and front without much warm up and their hands can touch their feet while they are in a bridge. We then start to do jiebengong, after the standard inner/outer cresent, side, and front kick, the rest of the jiebengong is done as "combinations" or small parts of the free form which they practice all day every day. After jiebengong they start to do the difficulty movements. Which always consists of 720 b twist, 720 XFJ, 720 XFJ to splits and sadly 540 standing lotus (if thats what you want to call it Tom). After difficulty movements they start to practice forms normally starting with 40 x combinations of any 2 forms of their choice, and then followed by sections of the forms. Although they are free forms they are AWSOME and they actually have a heap of old school moves mixed in with the difficulty movements. So tom i believe you would actually like these forms a lot. And their dao and gunshu is flippant insane their flowers and other stuff are incredibly fast. The youngest member of the proffesional team is a 7 year old girl who would WHOOP my arse any day of the week at dao shu and chang quan. We normally finish off on alternate days of training with some sort of stregnthening exercises. We normally finish our first training by about 12:00 in time for Lunch.

At 1:00 I am now studying chinese with 7 and 8 year olds in their primary school. I am learning mainly to write and read chinese characters. My lesson finishes at around about 2-3 o clock in the afternoon which by then I am so tired I just go back to my room and blob out and sleep till about 5:45 where my friends normally wake me up for Dinner. After dinner which finishes at about 6:30 I normally taker another 45 minute break where I have a shower and then get ready for the night training which starts at 7:20. We just normally go through the same training schedule as I wrote above with the only difference being that we train weapons instead of empty hand forms. Our training finishes normally at about 10:30-10:45 pm. We then just go strait to bed. On saterdays and sundays we normally have 1/2 day trainings where we dont do a night session. Or sometimes instead of having a morning training session we play 2 1/2 hours of soccer which we just did this morning and then after soccer we do shuttle runs, sprints, squats and other stregnthening exercises. At present i have done only 5 days of their training and I am COMPLETELY BUGGERED! And my legs just feel like they been smashed by sledge hammers all week long. Every 2 weeks we get 2 days of complete rest though as all the boarders get to go home so im staying with the proffesional team (whom some of them live too far away to go back home) at the moment. I hope to get back on a computer soon to update you with whats happening again but i wont know when the next time i will be back on again.

Hope you guys enjoyed the update,

Siu Yuat

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Hey guys sorry for the late update
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6:42pm Thursday, Apr 3
Well after the last update everything seemed to go down the gutter for me for the following 2 weeks. I got a stomach bug which gave me the runs for about 3 days and I also picked up a few injuries just mainly from fatigue. It all crashing down on me on a thursday when my legs gave in and I had to request a rest from the coach. It must have been the first time in my life where I really felt like the biggest pussy in the world! I took 2 days off where I literally just ate and slept.

The following week I found out that I had been training with the B TEAM... and that there is an A Team... On the Tuesday the entire team went off to a sports university where the A team trains. The facilities where absoloutely amazing. If you guys could imagine the north habour gym and how good the facilities are there... well this place was possibly twice as big with 4 x wushu carpets and weights and mats for the atheletes to use and train.

Every single one of the A team athletes had INSANE jumps as I saw LITERALLY above head height butterflys, 720 XFJ's, and 720 b twists. And these dudes did it like they were'nt trying at all. Also I saw one athlete do round off side flip BUT with strait legs and his head was above his own head height, it was NUTS!!!

The experience seriously was a great inspiration as it just only made me want to train harder. For the rest of the week I was still struggling to get a grip of my body as it was still getting used to the new training schedule. But i held onto my balls for dear life and gritted my teeth as I managed to scrape through the rest of the week till another 2 day break as the 2 weeks of non-stop training were drawing to an end. That weekend on the saterday my legs completely seized up and it literally took 15 minutes for me to walk or should I say crawl to breakfast which was 50 meters away from my room. That night we had a massive storm with high winds and rain and even thunder. Apparently it must have been the first storm Tian Jin would have had for about a year and a half. It was bad enough to give us a power cut to the entire small village where the school is located. So that was basically why I wasn't able to give you guys an update a fortnight ago.

After the 2 day break I was keen and ready again for another killer 2 weeks as if i survived this next two weeks i would be over the "one month hump" as the athletes told me where my body would hopefully get accustomed to the training. We started off the week normally but because of the upcoming competitions that many of the athletes where having in May and June, our coach decided to start stepping up the training. So on the Thursday morning we got a suprise wake up call at 5:00 am in the freakin morning where it must have been like 3 degrees C outside. And we were told that we had to do a 8 km run time trial. For once I felt like I wasn't so much of a paraplegic retard who was physically disabled, and my long distance running came in handy. However what i DIDN'T realise was that wasn't to be the end of the training. We returned to the school where we weere told to instead to go to the dirt soccer field INSTEAD of going to get breakfast. Once we got there we did 5 x sets of shuttle runs (start - 25 m - start - 50m - start - 100 m - start) all sprinting and then tag your partner. After that we did one legged hops from one end of the field to the other alternating legs at each end. I was so tired I can't even remember how many sets we did. We then did 3 sets of 30 m of frog jumps and then died. As a group we then literally crawled back to the training hall where we were given 10min to "warm up" for flexibility as though it wasn't enough training done for the morning. We then had to hold hyper splits for 10min on each leg where immeadiately after we had to do 10 front strait kicks as fast as POSSIBLE (if you could manage to lift your leg up) 3 times. I was so tired after that training that I didn't even feel like eating and just crwaled into bed and fell asleep. When I finally woke up at mid-day (because i was so hungry) to get a massive lunch where I met up with the rest of the team to find out that in one hour we had to get ready to go over to the A Team training facilities for yet another tranining session. Luckily it was an easier training session where we did basics, difficulty stuff, and then 12 parts of our form.

The next 2 days were just pure pain in my legs as I literally crawled to and from my room to training and to the food hall. On Sunday just as i thought my legs were feeling a little better we played a 2 and a half hour game of soccer followed by yet again tuck jumps, squat jumps, shuttle runs, and frog jumps. On the last set of frog jumps i was so completely F'd that i nearly broke down and cried. Luckily it was the last set of exercises and two buddies helped me to get back to my room where i just crashed into bed.

This week all the athletes were really excited as we got today as a half day training due to it being "ching ming" which is some sort of holiday. However on Tuesday mornings training session at the end of the class our coach said to us that tonight we would have an "very light" training session because on Wednesday morning there would be a japanese wushu team coming over to train with us and that we would have to train harder to show them how good the schools standard of wushu was. However it wasn't until the afternoon where we only just remembered it was April Fool's... When we turned up to training at 7:15 as usual, instead of the "light training" we had a Killer of a training session. After Basics, and difficulty jumps, we did 16 parts of our form + 8 x 1/2 forms (3 people per group) non-stop so bascially it KILLS your lungs, then did 1/2 squat frog jumps where you start in horse stance and then jump as high and far as possible with your legs together and then land back in horse stance. For each set we had to jump right around the entire training hall and touch all four corners in the end we mustv'e done atleast 4 sets. In my personal opinion that must have been the shittiest and cruelest april fools prank that has been pulled on me ever before. However the japanese team coming to visit us was not part of the prank and we actually had to train our hardest the following morning.

The japanese team mainly consisted of 10-14 year olds (guessing) whom were all very flexible but there movements and jumps where rather slow. But they all could still do 360 XFJ into splits as they all did the compulsory forms.

As of today my legs are alright and I actually think I am finally getting used to the training, yes they are freakin tight and sore, but you are still able to train on them and do everything that the coach tells you to do if you grit your teeth and bear with it. I hope this update wasn't too long winded as i had a months worth of stuff to say, but i'll definitely from now on try to update you guys once every fortnight or so.

Siu Yuat

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Another update.
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9:32pm Friday, Apr 18
Hey guys, it seems as though as the weeks go by and the B team draws closer and closer to the time of their competition that our holidays are becoming fewer and fewer. We were meant to be having 2days of full rest this week end, but by the looks of it today will be my only day of "rest" which basically means training in the morning and we get the night off.

After Ching Ming on Thursday our cook decided to takea break himself so it seemed as though I wasn't going to get good food over the weekend and we werent about to take a break. It was on friday when we decided we couldn't handle the MSG lodaded dinner that they served at the local food hall so we didn't have dinner that night and instead saved out stomachs for a midnight pig out. At 11:00pm we climbed out from out bunks on the second floor and crawled down the drain pipes (a bit like spider man) to the dirt road outside. We then walked off down the street to a noodle bar to get a taste of real chinese culture and its famour history of noodles.

The noodles were made right right infront of your eyes fresh with a lump of dough which they drew out by hand. The end result was one incredibly stringy and tasty noodle about the width of thin string and it was extremely long. It was bad luck to have cut the noodle into shorter bits and pieces as its length was a representation of your life span. So any way for the rest of the week end I was to live on noodles for dinner.

Our week end training consisted of conditioning in the morning which meant 2 hours of basket ball 4-5 people per side (which meant that you had to run around heaps) and then core work.

Core work = 40 v sits (but your legs are allowedto touch the ground but as fast as possible), 10 second rest, 50 back sit ups, 10 second rest, 20 oblique sit ups with a partner 10 second rest...then back to the beginning again. we repeated this 5 times.

Then at night our regular training of basics, jumps, difficulty movements, and then forms.

I personally however have been having a strange feeling that my TongKongFei Jiao and B-twists have gotten worse ever since I have been here because my technique has gone down the drain when ever I am tired and still try to do the jump.

For the following week we were mainly just going over a huge amount of repitition of forms, which normally meant loads of combination, parts, and half forms. Also our coach has set a new system inplace which tries to encourage the athletes to not just waste their time repeating the same mistakes everyday that they practice and to instead to train smarter and hopefully improve faster. Each week the athletes are to write out 2 goals to work on for that week and to focus on those goals as they practice every day. These goals are then given to the coach who will ensure that the goals are achieved to the best that they can do so.

On friday the 11/4 our coach had aspecial suprise in stall for us, he gave us a unregularly easy training in the morning, but at night he made us do twice as much basics, and two times the amount of jumps, which was then followed by ONE HUNDRED combinations of 2 forms of our choice NON-STOP. So it was just as bad if not worse than doing half forms and full forms as on each repitition because its reasonably short you had to give it your full effort but because 5 people per group were cycling through so fast the amount of rest between each one was about 20-30 seconds, so it also got your cardio working.

Again on saterday and sunday it was conditioning in the morning followed by an easier but normal training (easier comparatively to the mornings training).
On Monday after the weekends training my body crashed and I missed breakfast as I slept strait through my alarm at 7:00, and only managed to get up at 8:45 just in time to get my shoes and waddle off to training.

On thursday there was a huge performance at the school as some of the big wigs around the country came to visit the school. So that morning all the athletes were extremely happy as a performance meant only having to perform a half form and no training for the morning. However what that performance made me realise was, the atheletes don't actually improve or do better when performing because even when we practice they are already always giving it their 100% and doing it as though they are performing. The performance also gave me an opportunity to see the A team perform some Dui Lian forms. The most impressive performace by far was the empty hand vs spear (which apparently won a gold medal at the last junior all nation wushu competition, junior = 18 years and under). The dude who was stabbing the spear did not hold back as he stabbed it fast and hard with full force but it was so accurate that the spear head would be literally be touching the dodging persons skin. It was amazing to see as the form looked so real, I now really can understand how many of the stunts and choreographed fight scenes in movies use wushu as a base. That afternoon however we hadto make up for the mornings training and so we played 2 hours of soccer followed by 20 foot ball field legnths of 1 legged hops then 20 rows (inside the training hall) of frog jumps.

Today we played basket ball again and then did leg work. It seems as though during my time here I have't had a day go by where my legs dont actually ache or hurt even though I have gotten used to the pain. Any way I suppose you just got topull through it as the worst andmost famous cliche goes: "no Pain, no gain."

Hope you guys are all doing well and having fun, Siu Yuat