National Interschool Wushu Competition- Day 5

Today is Day 5 and we only had one competitor- Ryan Goh competiting in the B-Boys Nan Gun event.

There were a lot of strong opponents in this category, with some of them every from the National Youth Squad! Honestly, Ryan spent about just a month or so learning this routine!

When we first talked about it and I asked Ryan if he was willing to stretch himself and just try and see how much he could absorb. Ryan told me, "Why not?"

So Ryan spent the next weeks training hard with Darren- it was good to see our boys helping each other out. I tried my best to help since I learnt this routine before, but the current interpretation is very different from the way I was taught and I've not actively practiced it in a long, long time, so I wasn't able to be of much help to Ryan. But Ryan perservered and learnt the routine from our coaches, got Darren to help him fine-tune the lessons and still gave a pretty good performance.


Not bad right? Not in contention for Top 4, perhaps, but definitely not bad for less than 2 months work.
Now some may ask,"Eh Mr Siow, your athlete haven't even start learning the routine, you sign him up for the event? Liddat how to win?"

Well, it is my belief and philosophy here in the VS Team to send my students for competitions in order to make them better athletes and not to have good athletes in order to win competitions.

Ultimately, it is all about personal growth.
Did Ryan win a medal? No.
Did Ryan grow and achieve a breakthrough under the challenge I set for him?
Definitely.

And that is what the martial arts are all about :)