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When Reuben Bean came out of his first full-contact kick-boxing match, he felt as if he had been pounded with an iron bar for four days afterwards.

His opponent Garon Wilkinson likened the experience to being run over by a water truck.

When the pair stepped out of the ring the doctor was amazed that neither had suffered a serious injury.

The bout was a high-intensity no-holds-barred martial arts contest as part of the Police Boxing Night last year.

It was the first competitive taste either man had of the emerging sport of San Shou — which basically means “Chinese free style.”

Now they are aiming to take part in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

They have formed the Bermuda San Shou Association and will travel to Ohio to compete in the Annual Arnold Classic this weekend — their first step on the road to China.

Both fighters have extensive martial arts experience.

But like many other martial artists worldwide they have been attracted to San Shou as it provides them with the ultimate test of their skills — in a real fight situation.

Basically anything goes — any throws, kicks, punches or take downs are allowed, with points allocated for successful moves over three two-minute rounds.

The ultimate objective, though, is to knock your opponent out.

“If you can end the fight early by knocking out your opponent or injuring him, then that’s the objective,” said Wilkinson.

Both say they have upped their level of fitness by 200 per cent since they started training years ago.

And the physical demands of the sport are like nothing they have ever encountered.

Bean even rubs a pipe on his shins to harden his callouses and enable him to soak up more blows, as part of his intense training regime.

In most martial arts competitions a system of points-sparring is used where you gain points for successfully completed moves but are not actually trying to strike your opponent with full impact. It’s a simulated fight situation.

San Shou is the real thing.

“It’s very demanding on the body. You have to have the expansion of your lungs at a level where you can handle the stress,” said Bean who runs 20 miles a week as part of his training.

The running is just part of it. Working towards the competition, Bean has been training in karate three times a week as well as doing yoga, boxing training with Forty Rego, cycling, running, skipping, weights and two-days a week concentrating on the Wing Tsun in-fighting system.

Wilkinson does a mixture of Kung Fu, running and weights as well as capoeria, a Brazilian martial art, set to music.

They travel to Ohio this weekend knowing they are fitter and better prepared than ever before.

What they don’t know is the level of the test that faces them.

Wilkinson said: “We are going into this blind we could blow the competition away and they could say you guys have to move up, or there could be other competitors there with just as much martial arts experience as us.

“Your competitive career as a martial artist is only so long and with the Olympics going on in 2008 we both agreed that we wanted to give it our best shot. We decided to take the punishment and get involved with it.

“The division we are fighting in, in Ohio, is the intermediate division. We’ll be up against opponents who have had one or two fights.”

Their ultimate aim is to move up to the top level and compete in the Olympics. They will go some way to finding out how realistic that goal is at the weekend.[[In-content Ad]]

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