In my childhood, I hated sports. At 18 years, mainly in order to combat my growing overweight, I began jogging once or twice a week.

My attitude has changed a lot since then. I love endurance training. I like to run until I hit the wall and then go on, testing my will. Life is just so much better knowing you can outclass most people. It’s like owning an expensive sports car: There is no need to show off, you just know you’re better and that alone boosts your self esteem :)

Just forget about one thing: training doesn’t have be easy. No, it should be hard. The key is to love going all-out. Every drop of sweat that hits the floor makes you know that you’re different. That you’re not average! In this context, I can wholeheartedly recommend Björn Friedrich’s “Fighter Fitness” program which you can find at www.fighter-fitness.com (sorry, german only). These exercises are just great and you need nothing but some free space to do them.

Quite on the other side of the scale, I’m also training internal martial arts. The so-called external martial arts are what we all know: throwing and punching opponents with muscle power. Internal martial arts involve using your body in a way to achieve maximum effect without using your muscles. To most people, internal martial arts are better known for their mysticism and talk about “Chi” or “Prana”.

Interested? Here are some hidden jewels of books you might still be able to obtain: Most of the books by Mantak Chia. The books Hong Li Yuan. By Kosta Danaos. And those of Bruce Kumar Frantzis, which very likely explains exactly what Kosta Danaos is talking about. Those are not just some recommendations from the top of my head. To alone pick out this insiders between all those “become a taoist master in 21 days” mass-friendly books is pretty darn challenging ;)