WELCOME to
Kung-fu Kingdom!
http://kungfukingdom.com/
NEW SITE ONLINE NOW! If you're into the martial arts and kung-fu, stay tuned and develop your inner-warrior with Kung-fu Kingdom's news, reviews, exclusive interviews and much more!
Feel free to subscribe and share your comments on our
YouTube channel. You can "like" us on
Facebook: kungfukingdom2012, we're also on Twitter and Instagram -so, it's all the way
...with KFK! Kung-fu Kingdom...dedicated to the martial arts...
Now we join
Mark as he does more specific capoeira training under the guidance of his capoeira maestro (teacher). He practices spin kicks on a pad, skip rope, punches and kicks on the bag
.
In the next scene, we see Mark at the gymnasium stretching out. He talks in detail about the intensive, gruelling workouts he regularly does: "I think without some ah...gymnastics background there's no way I could have done any capoeira this fast, definitely not. I mean just to do a handstand most people need a month or 6 to get that down.
In capoeira, everything is, you're either on your hands
or flipping in the air doing split kicks or something and ah, fortunately for gymnastics -do a lot of that as well.
The thing that's different is, in gymnastics at least on the floor, you have a springboard floor, you have the mat, the cushion to do the fancy tricks. In capoeira you're doing it on pavement, on hardwood floor.
I've got the technique, my feet are still trying to learn how to cushion themselves!
It's hard, it's hard, but definitely the gymnastics has been a great advantage, no doubt. I started taking private lessons in capoeira about 3 months ago and that's 4-5 times a week and hour and a half to two hours a day, and it's just one-on-one with the instructor and myself
Amen Santo. And it's gruelling! I mean he has me doing cartwheels, cartwheels and flips and all the kicks on hardwood floor, so I do that, you know, 4-5 times a week. I do my weight workout in the mornings, I start between 6 and 7 and it goes for an hour and a half to two hours and that's 6 days a week...religiously.
And then inbetween the capoeira and the weights, I try to do some other type of workout, sometimes gymnastics or kung-fu where I work on the bag and do a lot of cardio vascular. I work some weapons and if I do neither of those,
I go surfing or run the hill over at
Mountain Gate, it's about a mile and a quarter, 45 degree out, it is gruelling! I prefer surfing and that, but if the waves are low than I do the running it's pretty intense, very intense! I like to dance and do gymnastics and do martial arts, and capoeira is a combination of all three, with music, I mean it's great. It's gonna be a visual thing onscreen, a really great visual thing.
But yeah, I met with my director and the producers and they said it's capoeira and said, "
Hey, I know a little bit of that!" It's kinda cool and the dancing and they said, 'the martial arts and gymnastics is all combined', it's going to be quite great I think.
My father, he's a pretty good martial artist...he's a very good martial artist actually. He's in the
Black Belt Hall of Fame, it was
1977. Probably besides
Bruce Lee, one of the most popular, famous kung-fu masters in the world and I've been training with him and my mother (who got her black belt from my dad), all my life. I've been kicking people in the shins since I was 4 years old or so! He's got some students who do capoeira and he thinks it's a great art. He believes that the more arts that one is exposed to, the better warrior you are because you know, you understand movements more, you can understand how to fight different people, different techniques and so forth. So when I got involved in capoeira, I said "Hey pop!" I was really excited, "
Yeah man, I'm taking capoeira lessons you know!" He goes,"
It's about time!"
Right OK, yeah, whatever pop! But he's happy. He always thought I was a little bit showy in my self-defence techniques but he does believe that onscreen it's gonna look great and he knows I can back most of my stuff up, yeah, most of it".
(Then he does a textbook display of tumbling and somersaults with martial expressions to end!)
Mahalo (thanks) Mark!
- published: 07 Aug 2011
- views: 116944