How To Avoid Hitting A Martial Arts Plateau

Martial Artists are no different from other athletes and if you're not careful you can easily hit a plateau. Plateaus must be avoided because it means your martial arts skill and fitness levels aren't improving. Here's The Shaolin Temple's Five Steps to avoid hitting a plateau.

1) Change Your Martial Arts Routine

Our bodies are efficient machines which adapt to whatever we throw at it including our workout. When you first start to train you'll make gains in your training but after a few months these gains will level off because your body has learnt to adapt. To avoid hitting a plateau you need to change your martial arts workout every couple of weeks.  Combining  my Workout, Bootcamp and newly released Circuit Training DVDs will give your body the constant change  it needs so it never reaches a plateau.

2) Do High Intensity Circuit Training

If you're fit and you can run 5k without any problem then you're ready to do circuit training. Though not suitable for everyone, this is the best way to torch fat, build lean muscle and boost your metabolism. Fighting Fit is a saying which we all know means optimal fitness. Fighters need to combine circuit training with cardio runs and if you're serious about your martial arts, alongside training with my DVDs you also need to run.

3) Mind Body Connection

Shaolin is all about the mind body connection. It's the way that Shaolin Monks understand Zen. You may have no desire to understand Zen but do you have desire to be more focused? Centered? At peace with yourself? If you're following Shaolin correctly then this is what you'll gain.

4) Make A Plan

It's not enough to put the time in, you need  a plan and a destination. After you've done your martial art's workout , take a pen and write down how you did. Tracking your progress can help  keep you motivated. Plan ahead as to what DVDs  you'll be working out to on what days. Give your training the respect it deserves.

5) Train the Yin as well as the Yang

Rest is an important factor in our martial arts so you don't burn out. As well as taking one or two days of a week from your training, you also need to do Qigong to regenerate your body from the inside out. And it's important to get a good nights sleep. Research is showing just how important sleep is for the body to regenerate itself.  If you find it hard to sleep then do some of the movement from Qigong Volume 2 before you go to bed at night.

The beauty of Shaolin is that we can shape it around our fitness level, energy levels and lifestyle by constantly adapting the workouts. Listen to your body and work with it.

For more information on Shifu's DVDs please click here. 

My journey with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)

My journey with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a long way. When I was a teenager, about 14 or 15, I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). This is not something that made me change my habits and my lifestyle at the time. Finally, I was still a teenager. I was more interested in boys than in the days of my health care.

Of course, my bad days, when I just felt sluggish, my body ached, and I was very moody. I just wrote it to the "girl" and as much sleep as I could. I still did everything as usual ... in high school, talked with friends, and talk on the phone constantly (which drove my parents crazy).

But, I realized that I was older (and had more children), I was always tired, I'm always in pain, and my "bad day" is far from the number of my "good day." However, I did not do anything, except to catch off guard with my child if I could go, so let their children go to bed early when I wake up, and as late as possible, hoping for missed "catching up" to sleep and rest well . I thought I was completely amazed and overwhelmed because I have three children under the age of three years, I've worked, and I went to school full time.

Then, about 6 months after my last daughter I have with dizziness, and was later diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and then about 6 months after that I was cancer of the uterus (only a year after I was diagnosed with cervical cancer) diagnosis. It was time. It was time to start to really take care of myself. If someone has CFS them much more susceptible to other infections and diseases because their immune system is not working quite right, it is harder for your body to fight with everything that happens in it, and open the door for other diseases and illnesses in which they want to anchor.

I decided to lose weight, start eating healthy and give me some time, "I" (if I could get to the bathroom or bedroom and back again young children behind me and knocked on the door to get my attention.) My "I" started later and later into the evening, leaving less time for sleep. But I'm working more, and I did eat healthy, so I started to feel a little better. I threw a ton of weight in a few months, and I was very pleased with the results that I've seen.

Since there is no cure for CFS, doctors decided my mask on drugs, just about my symptoms. They put me on Antivert for my vertigo. I think it may have taken two doses before I threw the bottle. I can not work on this drug, so I'll take it. I will fight with vertigo. Then they sent me to a neurologist for MS, where they rode 24CC drain cerebrospinal fluid from the spinal column, and then immediately sent me home. I had a spinal migraine for at least a week - and that's no joke! Then they wanted to take me to the boat for my medication MS. Thanks, but no thanks. If I can not work, then I do not take it. They made me a round of something-or-other to cancer. It was a once in-a-lifetime thing.

I worked on a regular basis (as regularly as the mother of five children, but can I have it sometimes), eating healthy (I have no red meat is almost 8 years old), with my vitamins and (TRY) less busy (it's not too well disguised). But, I have a commitment that I was a healthy person in general. More services and charitable activities. Stuff like that. Prayer had a lot to do with my recovery process as well.

Since then I have tested without cancer and my MS symptoms are rare these days. But CFS remains at the forefront of everything I do. I know that if I have a "big" day (that is, all day long meeting at work or if I move or make a big project in my house) I need at least a "down time" in the day to plan, where I do nothing but relax and fall asleep. If I do not, I will be absolutely useless to everyone, including me, the next day. I really need to listen to your body to make sure I do not overdo my activities. Some days I feel absolutely great, energetic and motivated to do anything, motivated, stay for another 30 minutes in the gym. On other days, and usually for no apparent reason, I'm just exhausted, unmotivated, and it takes everything I've just started the day with a bed. For me, I have to keep a positive attitude and remember that I am doing everything to go to work, clothes for my children. It really helps me every day.

Once I was with all the complaints I made a vow to myself that the best diagnosis quality of life for their children to do anything. That's why I get up every day and decides to push me through the "good" until the next day to come.