Andrew Meier's Blog

Yesterday, my family hopped in the car and drove to Saskatchewan. Even though the eight hour drive might've been boring, I was still excited to see my relatives for the easter break. I think that a long road trip is a perfect metaphor for kung fu training. Sometimes, you ask yourself why you're doing this and think about how great it would be to have just stayed home. Other times, you look out the window and notice just how amazing it really is to be on this journey. Even though you just might be looking forwards to the destination, simply disregarding the journey, you could never ever get to where you want without that journey. I think I can safely say that even the most dedicated person can feel bored and tired of their training, but we all must keep our heads up, look out the window, and find the good parts in our journeys even if we think only the destination counts.

This week was not the greatest. I didn't achieve my routine goals the majority of the past few days. Along with this, I wasn't really able to come up with a good subject to write about today. Luckily, however, I have no school for the next week, as it's spring break. Thanks to this, I'll have more than enough time to catch up on missed progress. Hopefully, I won't have any more weeks as slow-paced as this past one.

This weekend, I had a very important sports event, the mixed 8x200m race, at the 2018 Running Room Indoor Games. This competition is very meaningful to me, as I've been doing it since grade 5 and this year would be my last chance to race with my school. In my eyes, I've been training all these years for just this competition. My main goal of this weeks blog is to show that even without obvious results, you have to keep trying. From my first season to last year's, my team has never even made it to the finals, let alone stand on the podium. No matter how much that put down my spirits, I always tried out for the team the next winter. This year, I was doubtful I would even make it on to the "A" team, as I had never done so in the past. To my surprise, however, I was chosen to be the starter for that elite team. The competition consisted of three races. Preliminaries, with 12 teams advancing to semifinals. After semifinals, 6 teams would race for the gold. My team ...

One of the most enjoyable parts of training is attaining goals. However, these goals are always better when accompanied with rewards. I think this ties in nicely with Kung Fu training, but also with dog training. Over the summer, our family got a dog, Panzer. The biggest responsibility with owning a new puppy is training. The most vital part of training is consistency and recognition of even the smallest achievements. In my opinion, the consistency part ties in better with my Kung Fu training. To attain anything, one must be consistent. With the recognition of achievements, I believe it corresponds less obviously with Kung Fu but is almost as important as consistency. When training our dog, we rewarded all of his advancements with treats and belly rubs. While these specifically might not work the best with people, we all need to recognize our own successes. Without any honour paid to our goals, nobody would ever want to complete them. Anything as simple as writing down your progress wo...

One of the most valuable pieces of advice I've ever received is when you cheat, the only person losing out is yourself. Take school, for example. You might have to take a difficult test, and instead of studying, you decide cheating is a better option. Sure, you might pass the test and take pride in your "beating of the system" but, in reality, you only cheated out yourself. In my experience, this is an important thing to keep in mind. Take doing 50, 000 pushups. Sure, anyone can lie and say they've done them, and no one would ever know. Except yourself. You would know that you cheated, and, to what results? What would you gain by cheating out yourself? The answer is nothing. You never learn the mindset to be able to complete difficult responsibilities. Anyone doing the same task honestly would gain infinitely more from it than a person who isn't. The ramifications of cheating are almost irreversible, so why do it in the first place?