What time do you get up on Sunday mornings? 6am with the baby? 8am as your brain is conditioned to getting up for work during the week? 9am for a bit of a lie-in? 10am for a proper recovery? Or not till the afternoon?

Sunday mornings for me are about getting up and going training. The two hour session for our members starts at 10am, which isn’t exactly early, and we have now moved to a new venue that is closer for the majority of our students to get to.

Yet for some reason, only the hard core of the club make it. And they remain elite compared to other students, as this advanced, very relaxed, small class gives instructors a lot of one on one time in which to perfect the details of students’ movements, and provides students with an extra two hours training per week in which to be taught new things.

As of February, the last Sunday of every month now includes one hour of chin na (kungfu sparring), which is a great opportunity for students to really get to grips with the intricacies of what they are learning, on top of regular sparring class on Thursday evening. Make the most of your life; get out of bed on Sunday and come and join us!

People come to us to learn kungfu, thinking it will be great fun to learn to hit things while getting fit. Few come to us to learn Shuang Yang, our Taoist Temple style of soft qi gung. But to be good at kungfu, you need to learn the soft side as well.

However, students are not interested in Shuang Yang because, it seems, the word ‘soft’ puts them off. Yet ‘soft’ in the context of kungfu does not mean squidgy, floppy, or so relaxed you’re practically asleep, and it definitely does not mean weak.

‘Soft’ energy is that fluidity of constant, effortless, undulating movement that good kungfu practitioners have, which gives you precision and accuracy that is developed through learning slowly, not charging in and throwing your arms around enthusiastically as juniors tend to do.

The problem that juniors always have is that they are too ‘hard’; not ‘hard’ as in macho or muscular, but their energy is ‘hard’ energy. They tend to have too much yang – too much fire – and they overcook movements. They have no fluidity or ‘softness’, which is the key to being good at kungfu.

If you look at the yin yang symbol, you will see a small dot of white yang inside the black yin shape, and a small dot of black yin inside the white yang shape. Yang is hard energy, yin is soft energy, but both contain each other and both are linked together in the eternally tail-chasing yin yang symbol. They cannot be separated, and one cannot exist without the other.

Inside kungfu there is softness, and inside soft chi gung there is hard energy. Both are martial styles, but you learn each one differently, and each one teaches the practitioner something different. Yet you can’t have one without the other. The best kungfu students also study Shuang Yang and they always have throughout the history of our Club. The facts speak for themselves. Get to class.

Welcome to the year of the Dragon! The Dragon, one of the 12 creatures in the Chinese astrological cycle and the only mythological member, spells a year of good luck and prosperity for people willing to work hard and take risks.

The Dragon epitomises character traits including dominance and ambition. Dragons prefer to live by their own rules and if left on their own, are usually successful. They’re driven and unafraid of challenges.

However, what many people do not know is each animal also cycles through the five Chinese elements. This year is the year of the Water Dragon. Water calms the fire of the Dragon, enabling Dragons born in this year to see things from the point of view of others and helping them to work well in teams.

For non-Dragon people, this year embodies the idea that hard work will bring you luck and success. In your kungfu, that means apply yourself, and you will grow and achieve.

Sometimes junior students can feel overwhelmed when they see seniors performing their patterns; they think ‘how on earth will I ever get to that level?’, and then they decide it isn’t possible at all. It’s like the company new kid, the assistant to the assistant, looking at the CEO and thinking to themselves, ‘I’d like that job, but there’s no way I could ever do something like that – I could never get there, it’s impossible, I’m only the assistant to the assistant!’.

That is the sense of impossibility. Ignore it. Think instead in small steps; move from your first pattern to your second, then to your third, and so on. Keep working, one step at a time, seize the dragon zeitgeist of 2012, and you will get to where you want to be.