Back In The Saddle

"Are you feeling okay?" asked Check.
"I think so. Why?" I replied.
"You're completely pale and sweating." she responded.
I looked past Teacher's shoulder into the floor to ceiling mirror directly behind him and noticed with concern that invisible mime people did a ghostly makeover on me while I was doing punching drills. The sweat I could discount until I realized that no one else was having a problem with the light effort. Nice.

I realized later that there are two types of out of shape; one that comes from general inactivity and one that comes from prolonged illness and the inactivity that it breeds. The later had me in it's grips last night. I was doing everything I could to keep breathing regularly, but at end of a sequence I'd be huffing and puffing like I just did sprints. Can a person have negative cardiac fitness? Apparently.

I was dreading going back because I wasn't sure that I'd have the wherewithal to do a whole class, but I made it through, drank two beers and when to sleep. It was great to see the class again. We now have a new member, a young man (12 or 13) who comes from a formal Karate background. At Yellow belt he knows 12 Katas very well compared to our 8. Ah youth.
Apparently his attendance has helped everyone be a little bit more professional so we are back to a formal bow in and out. Very nice.

Comments

Miss Chris said…
No matter how "in shape" I was, my cardio always sucked. Literally. I would suck wind no matter how many years I'd been working out and it never got any easier. When I was in tip top shape my resting heart rate was still in the 80's. Now that I'm not exercising it's in the 70's. Figure that one out! lol
3:31 PM
frotoe said…
damn invisible mime people...I hate when they do that!!
it doesn't take long lose that cardio health and feels like forever getting it back.
1:31 PM
[Mat] said…
man, I'm currently on training break for summer.

I expect to be very sweaty in the first class....

Just stretching, I could feel the pain already....

:D
8:52 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Timing And Technique

With our Ni Dan test coming up in three months attention to detail is the primary focus.  

I try to be objective about my personality, but the truth is the fact that I'm having some problems motivating myself to do the practice I need to do.  This would be absolutely going over problem spots in katas until they no longer crop up.  However, work at the house and life issues make practice hard to do most days.  I mean, I'm just making excuses at this point, but this leads up to how I do in class.

Last night we met in Sensei's garage and even though the heater was on we could see our breath.  Due to possible snow barely anyone made it to class.  So Sensei, Maia and I just worked on refinement.  In last night's case I worked on Wando for both hours and although I'm concerned that I have a lot of issues we were able to get me to look pretty darn good by the end of the evening.  Timing seemed to be a big issue for me. My sense is that I'm doing a one-two and I'm us…
Read more

A Twist In The Test

As I've reported before, I'm on the long slog to the test so there isn't much to add on a weekly basis.  I'm just trying to remember and be better with the things I need to know while balancing the real life stuff.

As you will recall part of the test is to do the Bunkai.  Bunkai is a series of moves that come from the kata that acted out by two people.  One acts as the aggressor (they are the Uke) and they are the loser in the show.  I have ten kata so I have ten Bunkai to learn. So far in the process, they have not been the emphasis, so learning them has been a bit of a challenge.  We've only touched on them fleetingly so it feels like a struggle to learn them. 

The new wrinkle was that Olivia (my test partner) and I were told yesterday that we were now encouraged to make our own bunkai for the test!  This was is a fairly large change, but we now have till May to sort this out.  Olivia and I are supposed to invent them and then present them to the Sensei and he'…
Read more

Hole In Foot

My wife and I are redoing yet another part of the house.  This time it's our bedroom and it should be the last of the massive internal projects.  We opted to pull an old wall out to expand the space and so far so good.  The detail work coming up as we put things together will take a long time, but the major operations have completed nicely. 

This kind of work at the house causes some difficulty though because I work my regular day and then work at night.  My only escape is to go to Karate which is nice, but I'm wiped out pretty quickly by midweek.  It's not so much the exertion, but the constant activity.  It also leaves me in a situation where I don't have enough time to think or process so karate can become a bit more difficult. 
Olivia (my NiDan partner) and me are at the point where we are fine tuning as much as possible so when are being critiqued the amount of notes can get pretty sizable.  The normal process is to be given three items to correct per session beca…
Read more