Teaching With Little Sleep

As I’ve mentioned before I occasionally have difficulty with getting to sleep for a couple of days, but exhaustion usually wins out and by the third night I’m all back to a normal.  I’m not sure what’s going on lately, but I’m on my fifth night in a row of disrupted sleep. 

What I feel like now.

Just like Tuesday Teacher had me run the class for the first hour while he slept in an attempt to catch up on jet lag and fight his cold.  I had kind of anticipated this and had a few ideas to work on before he showed up.  I’m somewhat fixated on working on things that I’ve been avoiding. Primarily I’ve been avoiding downward blocks to Roundhouse kicks.  We had once tried this and I got a hellacious goose-egg on my forearm that ended up taking weeks to heal.  I assume it was a monumental bone bruise.  Just like any injury anticipation of pain starts playing on technique and then I shy away or adjust incorrectly. 

So I worked on blocking roundhouses and ate bitter for awhile and was fairly surprised that I didn’t have massive bruises this morning.  Maybe tomorrow.

My second avoided technique is the spinning back kick.  Not something I’m particularly good at so I wanted to practice as much as as the class.  Bad idea.  No one was particularly good when we first started and I really needed to be paying attention to them.  Thankfully Teacher rolled in as was able to do that part while I stumbled around like a drunken sailor. 

As the class progressed I was supposed to act as the augmenting instructor, but if I wasn’t participating I was yawning enough to cause a vacuum.  The second hour seemed to drag a bit, but ended abruptly.  Teacher had me over for a couple of beers and asked how my time was while he was gone.  I tried to compile a quick list of lessons learned, but he mainly focused on how proud he was that I stood up and took control of the class for him.  Not too many times in my life has that occurred.  I went home and fell asleep immediately and then woke up at midnight.  The rest of the was light sleeping again, but I feel a bit more refreshed today.  We’ll see how long that lasts.  I’m supposed to going on a run with Dave.  Ugh.