This is a portion of a letter that Master Buckley wrote to Mr. Collin Lee recently. Another fantastic piece of Bok Fu philosophy. Enjoy!

Your World Championship Quest

“The road to achieving anything great in life will be filled with peril. But there is no intrinsic value to gaining reward without risk. If you had paid a million dollars for your black belt instead of spending more than ten years of your life working your butt off for it, what would it mean to you today? What would you have learned? How would it have helped you in life? What could you do with it? How would it help you if you were ever attacked? These are, of course, rhetorical questions but answer those same questions as you are now – a Richard Lee Bok Fu Do Black Belt – and it brings the point home. And of course, what gave meaning to your black belt – and will continue to do so for the rest of your life – is the blood, sweat, and tears you poured into the effort of earning it along with the recognition you earned from the black belts that came before you. Remember what an incredible feeling it was each time you were approved by a black belt after giving it your all throughout the testing process? All the money in the world could not buy that.

And yet there is a cost for greatness – but I’m not talking dollars and cents. Every great man or woman has made enormous sacrifice in his or her pursuit of greatness. The cost is steep to go where greatness lives. Payment is required first through the choices we make. To be a world champion, even if for one moment in time, we must make the hard choices. We must choose to take accountability over making excuses. We must choose perseverance over quitting. We must choose motivation over stimulation. We must choose positiveness over negativity. We must choose to control our emotions over acting out on them. We must choose discipline over foolishness. We must face our fears and then walk right into the teeth of those fears. We must rise after we fall. We must bleed, hurt, and all around physically suffer to know it will not end us. We must choose hope over despair. We must choose inspiration over desperation. We must choose hard work over talent complacency. We must choose faith in our teachers over doubts in ourselves. We must be more concerned with representing the system well than winning medals. Be decisive and unwavering in these choices, Collin, and you’ll be so much more than a world champion one day.

It is always easier to choose the path of least resistance. Most people do and that’s why it’s a crowded path. They give up on the dream of greatness and settle for the safe and easy path. Or maybe it is simply the path that everyone expects them to take and so they do. But becoming a world champion doesn’t work that way. Nothing about it is easy or expected. Nothing about it has anything to do with what anybody else wants. It’s what you want until it becomes what you have to have. It’s your life so start choosing what’s important to you so you can live the life you deserve to live. If you want to be the world champion, prepare to make the difficult and yes – even unpopular – decisions. If you want to win big in life, start by figuring out what it is you really love to do. Sometimes this takes some sorting out, but don’t stop until you get it right otherwise you’ll wake up five or ten years from now and wonder what the hell you’ve been doing with your life.”

BOK FU FITNESS

Warm Up:
10 inchworms
Straight leg kicks up and down mat
Broad jumps up and down mat
Drop stance/ hardbow/ crane stance up and down mat
10 pass through with staff

Workout:
50 Mountain Climbers
50 Sit Ups with Cross Punches / 10 Horse Stance Squats
50 Mountain Climbers
40 Sit Ups with Cross Punches / 20 Horse Stance Squats
50 Mountain Climbers
30 Sit Ups with Cross Punches / 30 Horse Stance Squats
50 Mountain Climbers
20 Sit Ups with Cross Punches / 40 Horse Stance Squats
50 Mountain Climbers
10 Sit Ups with Cross Punches / 50 Horse Stance Squats
50 Mountain Climbers

Warm Down:
5 minutes of belt stretching for hamstrings
5 minutes ball torture for shoulders