Adult Student’s Corner
by Sifu Sarah
Fu For You – Winter 2025-26
The pattern is incredibly obvious: train more, grade faster. This is true, up until it isn’t. While having low class attendance means you shouldn’t grade right now, there also comes a point where adding an extra class or two a week isn’t going to help you to grade sooner.
How many classes per week is the perfect number? That depends on you and your current goals. To maintain your training and see improvements in your Kung Fu, we recommend a minimum of three classes a week. There are inevitably times when you cannot do that; some of mine were exams and recovery from surgery, or injury, and that’s okay. Hitting an ebb is a normal part of a lifelong journey, and you are forced to train less than you want. Be aware that Kung Fu is not like riding a bicycle and you will have rebuild strength, endurance, and flexibility if you are away from training too often, or for too long.
Set good expectations for yourself. If you’re at an ebb, you should not aim for an upcoming grading. Don’t rush! There is always another grading around the corner.
Maximum possible attendance can be worse when you’re burning yourself out to show up. Personally, I found six classes a week led to me being sloppy or injured from lack of recovery days. I learned through trial and error, but you can be smarter. Listen to your body when it tells you to rest.
Even if you attended all mixed and rank specific adult classes offered per week, you would still need to make time to train on your own to develop skills on a personal level before you’re ready for your next rank. Kung Fu literally means “hard work over time”; hard work alone is not enough. Your early rank basics need time to develop and become automatic so you can consciously focus on the more advanced unfamiliar movements that you are now learning. A novice student thinks about how to move their feet in a forward stance. A yellow sash might think about the order of techniques in a simple moving drill, but their feet should carry them forwards correctly without much mental effort. A green sash should be able to follow a complex drill with a variety of strikes and stances without having to think through how to do each one individually and there’s no way to fast track the time it takes to ingrain that in your body.
The only time high class attendance is mandatory is during the six months prior to an advanced grading. Advanced gradings are marathons, so the extra cardio and endurance is necessary to succeed. Your past curriculum is vast and improvement is required, with basics nearing perfection. This is best achieved with frequent help from a friendly team of instructors actively working with you. I recommend testing out a higher class average the year before you want to grade, so any unexpected low attendance weeks won’t yet count against your grading window average. Finding a weekly class average that works for your current training goals will help you develop balance between your Kung Fu training and lifestyle.
