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After a brief summer break, Lu Yan returned to Shichahai to resume training in
September of 1974. Little did she know that her life was about to be changed
forever.
 Li
Junfeng and Wu Bin had been working on a proposal to found a Wushu team at
Shichahai. Their aim was to enable their athletes to officially enter National
Competitions and generally promote Beijing throughout China using this National
sport as a medium. They presented their proposal to the Beijing Sports
Commission and two months later, in November 1974, the Beijing Wushu team was
founded.
At this point there were over 100 students at the school from whom Li Junfeng
and Wu Bin initially chose 30 to join the team. Their ages ranged from 10 to 16.
This was the first team selection, and Lu Yan was in it right from the start.
This would mean a complete change from the 2 hours a day of training at the
spare time school. The students were all to live in Shichahai and Wushu was to
be their speciality, with Wu Bin coaching the men’s team, and Li Junfeng leading
the ladies coaching.
Training was now the most important feature of the day, with 3 classes a day for
about 6 hours or more each day.
A typical day would start with an hours conditioning from 6am until 7am,
including lots of running, Ti Tui (kicking) and Ya Tui (stretching). After a
brief rest and breakfast the main morning Wushu training session would start,
running from 8:30am until 11:30am.
After Lunch the students would start normal school classes from 2:30pm until
5pm. Lu Yan found the studying hard, not only because she was tired from the
morning Wushu classes, but also because she was at least 2 years younger than
the majority of her team mates. Most of her team mates already had an
understanding of subjects like Maths from their previous education, but because
Lu Yan had been picked at such an early age she hadn’t even sat a lot of these
classes. It took a lot of hard work from the youngster to progress through this
period.
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After school had finished, and the students had eaten, the final training
session was held. This was another two hour Wushu class running from 7pm until
9pm.
This training was hard on the athletes, especially when you realise that
initially there were no indoor facilities. Add to this the fact that Beijing has
a climate of extremes, with Summer temperatures reaching 40 degrees Celsius and
Winter slipping below -10 – you can begin to see how exceptional these students
were.
 As
was the order of the day she studied the full 18 weapon systems to first become
a well rounded martial artist, and then moved onto the main competition styles.
Every day she would train Ji Ben Gong, followed by empty hand styles like Chang
Quan, Nan Quan, Taiji, Bagua, Xing Yi, Tong Bei, and all kinds of weapon systems
including Dao, Gun, Qiang, Jian, Jiu Jie Bian and San Jie Gun.
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Want to learn more about Lu Yan's Coaching Career? Visit the
Coaching Career pages
Want to learn more about training with Lu Yan? Visit the
Train with Lu Yan pages
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