Health and Fitness

1) Stop Making Excuses The most common excuses I hear for not exercising are: I haven't got enough time or I can't afford it .  Exercise gives us more time because it has the potential to give us a longer and healthier life. Not only that, recent research shows that higher earners exercise more. The choice to exercise benefits not only you but your family. " I can't afford it " is another self-defeating excuse. When I was at the temple, we couldn't afford to eat good quality food so we had to eat a lot of steamed bread so we could have enough energy to train. We never used lack of food as an excuse to stop us training. Ask yourself, what is required as a start up health and fitness investment? You don't need to pay the hefty price of a gym membership. For the price of a few Shaolin Warrior DVDs you get my twenty five years of martial art's experience giving you a lifetime of training. 2) Give Up Waiting For Tomorrow You already possess the tools for g...

When you are training for a fight, it is vitally important that you build up your stamina. A marathon runner has very good stamina but they would never have the stamina to fight in the ring because a fighter’s stamina is totally different. In this article I will concentrate on the first part of a fighter’s stamina training; running. In future articles I will concentrate on bag work, pad work, sparring and body conditioning so that whatever fighting art you practice you can be totally confident that your stamina will really work for you when you go to fight in the ring. RUNNING WITH YOUR OPPONENT As a fighter you need to vary the way that you run, some days do a short thirty minute aerobic road run, other days do some hill running. Sprint running is also very important, do ten repetitions of 100 or 200 metres twice a week. Other times you should start with a five minutes slow run then one minute slightly faster then four minutes slightly faster again then back to one minute slow again. ...

 “Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.” Morihei Ueshiba Whether we are fat, thin, old, young, healthy or unhealthy, we all share a mind and body that can be trained. If we step onto the path of Shaolin with intellligence and determination, I am confident that we can bring to our life the health and wholeness that we all seek. Being healthy and whole means we take care of our minds at the same time as we take care of our bodies. Our mind plays a vital part in keeping us healthy. A happy mind makes a healthy body, and the key to happiness or unhappiness is in how we use our mind. Most of us have minds that roam about like untrained puppies. Our martial arts practice -  whether it’s Qigong, Kung Fu or both - acts as an anchor and tethers our mind.  Once you start to workout with my DVDs , let this become a  refuge from your daily activities. A time to let go of the small self and allow the big self to concentrate on the posture an...

INVEST IN YOURSELF At the Shaolin Temple, we get up every morning at five-thirty, and go for a run up the mountain. This is like putting money into a saving’s account. If we do not have the stamina then we will not be able to practice the skill. When we come back from the mountain, we practice five basic stances, five basic kicks and stretching. Learning martial arts is no different from learning maths or English, if we cannot add two plus two then we cannot progress to algebra, if we cannot read the alphabet then we can never read Shakespeare. This is the reason we study these very basic skills. Only when our body is getting stronger do we then start to learn some internal and external forms, and only when our master feels we are ready do we progress to studying fighting punches and kicks and then start to fight in the ring. THE IMPORTANCE OF QI We also practice body conditioning. I specialise in Shaolin Steel Jacket. The reason I specialise in Shaolin Steel Jacket is because I am sma...

EVOLUTION OF FIGHTING TECHNIQUES   The Shaolin Temple in Henan province, China, was founded by a humble Indian Buddhist monk called Batuo around 495 BC. In 517 BC the Bodhidharma travelled from India to the Shaolin Temple, where he founded Ch’an Buddhism or what is more commonly known as Zen. The legend is that when he arrived at the temple, he discovered the monks were weak from practicing sitting meditation all day, so he conceived and taught them a series of internal and external exercises to increase their health, strength, and vitality. These later developed into what we now call Shaolin Kung Fu and Shaolin Qi (Chi) Gong. Throughout the history of the temple, there has been a steady stream of monks bringing the best skills from the Asian world, combining them with ancient Shaolin skills, and then refining these modified skills for optimal effectiveness. The Shaolin Temple Fighting techniques are not pages from a history book but are something that are as alive and relevant tod...

“Bodhidharma travelled to the East to teach these two Yi Jin and Xi Sui classics. A bird like the crane is able to live long, an animal like the fox can be immortal, a human who cannot learn from these classics is worse than the birds and animals.”   The Mind and Body of a Buddha   Ee Jin Jing makes your muscles and tendons strong, flexible, fast and powerful while building up the health of your internal organs. Xi means wash and Sui means bone marrow.   Xi Sui   means clean your bone marrow. The aim of Xi Sui Gong is to detoxify the body and cleanse the unhealthy aspects of the mind. The highest aim is to help us reach enlightenment and give us the mind and body of a Buddha. But even if we can’t gain enlightenment in this lifetime, the least this Qigong can do is give us a long, healthy, and peaceful life.   Connecting With Our True Nature     It is vitally important that we use our heart to train, not just our body. We can train as regularly ...

Rou Quan is a favourite form of mine because it mixes internal and external together. It may look gentle but that's because the strength is hidden inside the movement. It can make you quickly tired because you need to stay in the stances for a longer time. Sometimes the movement is soft and at other times you need to use power but this power is not the same as when you use power in a kung fu form, it is a special combination of mixing internal and external. Rou Quan is a famous Shaolin form, which is independent from all the other forms. One of the reasons for this is because it has some famous traditional techniques hidden in the movement. If they are not pointed out then a person may practice the form and be totally unaware of this. At the Shaolin Temple, Qigong practioners practise it, as do kung fu practioners because it perfectly complements both internal training and external training. It needs more space than Qi Gong so try and go outside or to a park and run throug...