How I got started – in case you don’t dare!

Dear forum readers,

this is the story of how I got started with practicing in the Wudang academy in Vienna, I hope you find it inspirational or even interesting

The first training
I had thought about starting doing “sports” again after a longer period of inactivity. My goal was to “get in shape” and have do a bit more to keep my body healthy. I thought about joining a regular gym, I had tried to do more sports on my own (running, own bodyweight exercises, etc.) – always with the result that I wasn’t motivated to do more after only a few trainings.

At this point I thought about starting Martial Arts and timidly typed “Kung-Fu Vienna” into the Google searchbar, only to find that a few Dojos and Schools existed in my district. I circled in on two Kung-Fu-Schools and chose the one with the more state-of-the-art webpage (now it’s official – I’m a marketing victim).

After two weeks of moving my first training here and there, I agreed on a try-out training with Master Ziji and went to the training on Friday afternoon. By this point I didn’t know what to expect, although I had read on the webpage that the school offers classes in various disciplines and difficulties. I was friendly greeted and the training started with a training of the basic stances plus a few punches and kicks. I was very excited about finally learning something and not only “doing exercises”, but after a few minutes my body was so shocked by the heavy energy use that I started to get out of breath and sweated heavily. I tried and tried to continue, but at some point I just had to take a break for 20 minutes and recover some energy. Meanwhile, my older Kung-Fu brothers were effortlessly jumping, punching and kicking the air – and I was astonished given these super human abilities.

After the trainig ended, I was exhausted, but happy and went home to relaxed on the couch. When my wife returned home, she almost didn’t recognise me. I got up and she told me that I had grown in height and looked better than for a long time. At this point I realised how proud I was and how much completing the training successfully had added to my self confidence.

You just read how I stumbled into my first Kung-Fu class, panicked and went with it. But why is this important?

To me, it is important, because for the first time in years I have found an activity, that stimulates body and mind and that takes me on a journey of my comfort zone and pushed the boundaries each time. This means a lot to me, because my body had begun to function less and less due to only sporadic exercising after a series of knee injuries. My mind had started to build “walls” around certain activities that were too “dangerous” (like exercising in the heat or direct sun), just because I hadn’t done it for too long and didn’t dare anymore. And now it has changed!