Wednesday, June 18, 2008

This month in questions

Now I realize why Uchi Deshi only posts once in a while. When I started I figured it would be efficacious to keep a log of what I've learned to help me out in the future, but I find that at this point in my career the new things that I'm learning are far and few between or so subtle that it takes a few hours to write it all out. Also, the dramas of past classes have also seemed to died down to nothing as I've matured or, at least gotten used to the folks I saw as the source.

So I'll post if I can remember or if something profound comes up. Today I'm writing because of two subtle things. The first was that doing blocks that use the fore-arms has always been something that made me wince. What made it worse was that if we did not do a lot of blocking any "build up" was soon lost and the sensitivity would return. I noticed after a pounding last night I didn't feel a darn thing. I'm covered with some deep bruises, but nothing hurts. I guess the sensitivity to blunt trauma has receded. This is not to say that when Teacher uses a technique on me at full force that I don't often groan inwardly, but by and large I felt a little pride that I've been doing this long enough that blocks on the forearm aren't something that I have to dread.

The 2nd is that I believe that I have become a little bit smoother with my techniques. For years anytime I had to do any of our Aikido based techniques I would use a huge amount of muscle to force the issue - leading to poor execution and often a failure to get the desired effect. Of late we've been doing a lot of multiple attacker exercises and it's been pointed out that I'm not hunching my shoulders in effort and the take downs are a lot easier. However, after about 10 minutes of that I notice that my technique fails and I fall back on muscle - naughty.

Belt news - None! After Teacher and seemingly everyone in town seemed to know it was right around the corner, discussion and preparation have completely dried up. Is it me? Or is it Teacher? I don't think about it most of the time, but last night before class I was perseverating over it for some time. Asking myself a lot of questions with no particular answers or reasons to have them.

2 comments:

BSM said...

I always have problems not just relying on the "technique." I always want to crank!

It's happening a lot now in chin na. They keep telling me the stuff will work on technique alone and after I have that I can start thinking about speed and some power.

To a certain extent I think all the hard arts help us desensitize to pain. Still, sometimes I groan.

:-)

Potatoe Fist said...

We've got a guy in class that keeps saying, "pain is just weakness leaving the body!" He seems much more durable that me for the sharp pains. Today I looked like an abused spouse from the lifetime channel.

The technique thing is soo tough. It requires so much timing and balance. After all these years I feel like I'm only brushing the surface.

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