I didn’t know, but this class marked Mark’s 14th year wushu anniversary. Thats awesome, he remembers the exact day, time and the fact that it was partially cloudy outside. Sheesh, I remember mine was around October 2001, around the time The One was released in theatres, not the exact time and day though. With that, congrats Mark!

The rule for showing up late is that you have to do 20 burpee’s. Burpee’s are not a cute package of seeds to start your own watermelon patch, burpee’s are the worst thing you can subject yourself to do. 10 is enough for me, 20 is impossible, and 30, which is the NEW requirement for showing up late, is a new state of exhaustion. I can’t wait till next week, I almost want to show up late and try 40. A burpee is a simple exercise, you start off standing, you jump straight up in the air (clapping your hands above you head), immediately fall into a squat/balled-up position on the floor, then your jut your legs out and do a push up and pop back up to a standing position. That, is just ONE burpee.

I was very warmed up after those, and I did some stretching real quick and joined the lines for basics. We did a LOT of jumping front kicks, and front stretch kicks. It was really nice to really focus on those.

When we split off into groups, I stuck it out and did 8 sections in a row, then my entire form twice. Of course, my entire form is about half of a real one, that is why I went twice. I think I wanted to die right after that, so I parked my self on the stage next to Mark and enjoyed his new nick-names for a few of the students, like “hand-eyes” which sounds like a cool nickname when said in Chinese.

Once all three groups finished, which was around 9:10pm, we did about 20 minutes or conditioning. First it was sprint relays, which then become frog leap relays, then duck walk relays, then sprinting again… After that, we did 30 sit ups, 30 push ups, and 30 “supermans”, which after my lunchtime workout with Jenny of just core exercises was difficult to complete. Finally, we ended with a set of horse-stances, and Mark was nice enough to push a few of us into a more “proper” stance, which felt like someone just ripped my legs out of their sockets. So today, I feel fantastic, and I really like walking up 3 flights of stairs a few times a day after a class like this. It reminds me of when I first started Wushu and I thought “this shouldn’t last forever, I’ll get used to this soon…”