Fist in the Frost

Class V 2.6

2012-01-27T10:47:00.001-09:00

A strange sense of malaise is overcoming me this morning. I’m not sure if it’s simply exhaustion or seasonal depression; or possibly a combination of both. I got through class with my normal enthusiasm (I think), but when we got to fighting my energy had completely left me. I participated in a couple rounds, but my heart wasn’t in it at all.

When my heart and mind aren’t in the fight I have a really hard time keeping up the pace and I end up getting hurt. I had talked to Trucker earlier in the day about coming to class (he’s fighting a dislocated toe and difficulty with a previously broken back). I assured him that we could spar, but we would take it really easy.

Trucker’s fighting style is very aggressive, but disorganized as it relates to hands. Nevertheless, it’s effective when it comes to a fight because you have to contend with them. Of course I blocked poorly and jammed my thumb early on.

My second match with Beard was slightly better, but I was moving so slow I gave up after a minute. He got an excellent shot right on my solar plexus at one point that removed a lot of my enthusiasm.

Our post fighting review made me feel slightly better. I spent a little time lamenting my slow speed, but the guys felt that my style was more thoughtful and relaxed. Hunh! I wouldn’t have said that myself.

We practiced a guided throw and the tomo-nage and generally had a good time.

Class V2.5

2012-01-25T11:46:00.001-09:00

Whoops! Missed a post. I like doing the post fight review from our Thursday classes, but we had so many matches that I couldn’t even begin to tell you anything about what happened beyond a few humorous bumps and dings. Most notably, in a very slow match with Beard, I couldn’t keep my hands up and would regularly run into his fist with my face.

In retrospect I’m really impressed with the amount of enthusiasm and energy that’s created by the sparring classes. A flurry of phone calls, texts and email comes blasting my way the day after class. Everyone wants to analyze so they can be ready for the next class. Oddly enough they are all getting better whereas I’m technically proficient, but horribly slow. My spinning back kick or hook kick is so slow that they can eat a sandwich as I make my lazy way around. All I ever do is end up eating another foot or catching a shot to the crotch.

Last night’s class was focused around handwork so I could get folks to use that more in sparring. The footwork we have going on is almost silly. There is a throwing of feet and hands for no reason in most of the exchanges, so I want folks to work on technique. Slow coming.

I couldn’t put together a coherent plan for class in my head so I had something called the technique waterfall. It means that I’ll pick one technique and I’ll migrate one to whatever is closest it to and keep going from there. It’s surprisingly fun for me, but it creates a technique flood for the class. Those poor bastards have to remember a few things from all the stuff I throw at them. Not particularly helpful.

Highlight – The Twins and Robot showed up at half time while we were reviewing some of the jumping kicks from Tuesday. I ended up reviewing the jumping side kick and put everyone in a line (12 of us!) and seeing who went the farthest. A fun competition for anyone teaching.

I spent a moment on jumping reverse hook kick and gave it up for the youngest and most advanced folks. We chose the crescent to jumping crescent instead. It’s a lot of fun.

Personally, I’m working on Sip Soo and have it down nicely and I’m just starting to look at Jin Do. So much to carry around in my noggin.

I think tomorrow it’ll be a small amount of mat work on a small throw and some tomonage before fights.

Class V2.3

2012-01-18T09:30:00.001-09:00

I had a small case of pre-class nerves, but as soon as we started up they disappeared. I never thought that my incapacity to do more than one thing at a time would pay off, but leading class sure falls into that dynamic.

My mind fills with anxiety that consists mostly of, “what do I do after that?” but I move on much more fluidly than I could have ever imagined. I gather that I’ve been participating in the class structure so long that the everything just comes along in sequence the less I think about it.

I wanted to work on our few Aikido moves and some throws after introducing a new kick, the jumping crescent and a new throw combination (as seen here)

Tim Cartmell demoing a circle block into throw.

The rule that Teacher set for me was that I was never to teach anything that I didn’t know. The temptation being that my skills were enough to “interpret” what I see and then construct a lesson around it.

Let’s just say that I’m glad I didn’t take any video of our execution of the moves above. Tim does a beautiful hip throw at the end of the move and my back won’t allow that, so that bit of the move becomes a trip and rollover-the-leg type of throw.

After beating that move (and each other) into submission we practiced our basic hand locks and moved on to the two most common throws we like, kotegeashi and shihonnage (wrist twist and four corner throws, respectively).

Next time we’ll work on the jumping side kick, which should wear folks out enough that sparring will be appropriately executed. I think I use the block, roundhouse to stomach, followed by axe or crescent at the exercise.

Class V2.2

2012-01-13T15:56:00.001-09:00

Due to the incredibly inclement weather where I live I really assumed no one would show up for class. My wife was curled up on the couch in a cocoon of blankets with our cats snuggled in close. Thankfully, I had the keys to the dojang door and that forced me to push myself out the door and into the elements.

To my surprise we ended up having eight folks show up. Very nice since it was going to be fight night. I wanted to be able to spread everyone out a bit. With a smaller crowd I don’t think we’d be able to do very well in longer fights. I see more incidence of injury the longer matches go on. When we do informal sparring there are no stopping for points only calls from the director to move away from mirrors or when the action gets out of control.

I started the class with review of cat stance, cat stance with front snap kick, then with a review of double knife hand strikes. We followed that up with a review of good things to remember while sparring.

- obscuring vision during a planned attack makes a nice setup for kicks
- Set up a tempo with the same attach over and over then change up for the third or fourth shot. Works most of the time.
- Break tempo if one is occurring
- Keep moving - side work is nice for linear folks

As promised I started the sparring before the hour break with the idea that we would be fresh and less prone to causing injury. We got in about four, two minute matches and then went to break. We resumed afterwards and in retrospect I’m not sure that we did much better. I think I did really well, but the same lack of clear, clean moves was missing. I’ll put up a couple of videos later this weekend. I think, subjectively, that a match is really technically beautiful when one person is really good. If not it can devolve into a sissy slap fight (with kicking!) pretty quickly.

We ended up with a bloody nose, a bruised rib and dead leg/foot amongst us. I’m the one with the foot. I think I bruised a nerve or something. I’ve got a noticeable lump on the side of my lower leg and my foot feels numb. I’m unable to pick the foot up very far so that’ll bare watching. Last night was weird when I tried to sleep. I kept tossing and turning because I couldn’t feel the foot. Weird.

The second hour concluded the sparring and we went to Kata to finish up the night. Probably the best kata I’ve seen in ages. As a group everyone was crisp and well balanced.

I think I’ll follow the formula next week with mat work on Tuesday before beatings on Thursday.

Teaching Class V.2.1

2012-01-11T09:04:00.001-09:00

I moved up the class by a half hour so we could get out a bit earlier and this was received without complaint. Not that we are a democracy or anything, but since we are a club model I felt that if we had buy in from most of the people it would go well. Last night we had 10 folks so I felt vindicated.

Unfortunately, I was stricken with a horrible case of the nerves. I think it was that I had turned my brain off every since Teacher came back from his last trip. I haven’t participated in hardly any leadership at all since. Not that I was doubting my ability to do the work (maybe I was!), but as soon as we started I was able to get comfortable with the process.

Before Teacher took off he gave me few tips for class last night. I had started a big pad drill for kickers last time so he had me get three people for the kicker which everyone loved.

To continue with the kicking theme I did side kicks, then with some variation, back kicks and finally spinning back kicks.

I’m trying to get everyone to focus on regular sparring/combat strategy. The primary easy technique being obscure the eyes to set up for the kick. Thursday I’ll work on set up a pattern and then break that.

I’ve also broken tradition a bit by having stretching for the last five minutes. I really wanted to do it for me because I don’t get a chance when I get home. This has also been well received.

Next class I’m going to have sparring before the break which is also a break from tradition. I think Teacher does it in the end of class because he wants folks to be tired and have them work on adrenaline management, but the amount of bruises and fat lips has made me worry a bit. I’ll give it a try and see how it goes.

Teaching Class V.2

2012-01-06T12:52:00.001-09:00

Most of us in the class have a few gis. I bought a second one because I only do laundry once a week if can I help it, but some of the folks have been in martial arts forever so have quite the collection. Teacher is no exception to this rule. Last night he was in a rather smart black Chinese style uniform. Black with white cuffs and white frog closures. What I hadn’t realized was that meant he was going to use that as a focus.

Immediately after warm-ups we went into a technique that required us pass a punch into the armpit where it was clamped between the arm and side. The we’d rotate around, doing a nice elbow lock across the back and swinging our spare arm to clamp across the neck doing a choke. You had to be relaxed and you couldn’t drag your Uke around or you’d never get the neck choke. Fun and furious.

Height was a good thing to practice around. If you had a significant height difference it became a challenge. If you couldn’t get your arm around the elbow made a nice home in Uke’s ear. Still effective.
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This was Teacher’s last night for a month so he left at half time to get ready for his trip overseas. I didn’t have a specific plan in mind so I focused on kicking and kicking combos. I ended up doing focus pad drills and finished the last five minutes on stretching. I know the older guys appreciated that.

Next time I’ll continue with kicking, but have pads for three people so the “monkey in the middle” will get to work with multiple attacks.

Axe Kick To The Arm

2012-01-04T10:57:00.001-09:00

It’s been three weeks since I’ve been to class, but I was pleasantly surprised to see Little Sister visiting from College and then later Beard who hasn’t been there in ages. I was mostly worried about my cardio fitness after largely doing nothing on vacation so I kind of barfed my way through the post warm up exercises.

Into the second hour we started work on Katas/hyungs and I was mostly burned out at that point. So, Teacher wanted Little Sister to have some fun and had us spare for a minute at the end of class. It was nice to see that we still had an easy going but nicely paced interaction. What stopped the fight was me dodging an axe kick (or crescent – not quit sure) that ended up coming down on my left bicep. It totally frogged that arm and it’s really sore today.

I’ll start leading class for the next three weeks starting tomorrow so I hope my imagination kicks in or it’s going to be long for everyone.

Fight Night Recap

2011-12-09T09:23:00.001-09:00

In an ironic follow up to last weeks post I blocked three whirling attacks, but neglected to keep up the pace for the next spinning backfist that ended up terminating on my brow. Boooiiinggg.

Class was relatively small with a new guy that comes from a Jujitsu school. I’m not sure what his experience is, but he was pretty awesome with all the basics. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone move with their balance as well as him.

In the second hour Teacher announced that we would spar since it’s been awhile. This was met with a lot of excitement since we hadn’t done any since I was teaching the class in September. Time flies and Teacher was most likely focusing on bringing the new students up to snuff.

I got three fights which was pretty awesome. My first was with the gal from the TKD background. She was a bit intimidated due to the lack of pads and the requirement to check kicks and punches. After we danced for a bit I started to get close and use my hands a lot which was not to her liking. In an amusing turn she said, “get away from me!” and shoved me away followed by a brutal kick. Hehe.

The second fight was with Dave. You never know what you’re going to get and this was no different. He moved right through me which I was somewhat expecting, but he instantly got grabby and wanted to throw, but it was all sort of hasty and poorly executed. Not to say that didn’t hurt when he contacted at a million miles an hour, but it’s safe to say that all I did was remain on the defense. In our first exchange I got two knees to the groin and while I tried to back away he would attack further! What a machine! During one of those exchanges he got the spinning back fist in. Ouch.

The third fight was with our new guy. I’ve never fought a Jiujitsu trained person and it was interesting to say the least. I couldn’t close with him at all. And when we did it was on his dime. I was able to stop his first takedown, but was never able to land a thing on him the whole time we ran around the room. In the end he waited till I relaxed and took a leg into a throw. Beautiful throw. I hope he can teach us some of that stuff. So fun.

The Place In Between

2011-12-06T10:40:00.001-09:00

The struggle to push through the thin meniscus that separates the differences in consciousness is a mysterious purgatory in which I don’t have a lot of sensory input, but nor do I care about that loss either.

During the push to wake myself up in the morning I may be at all sorts of levels of awareness, but not necessarily awake. This state of apparent (or false) consciousness is the closest thing I can equate to where I’m located when I receive a blow to front or back of my head.

I would say, in a totally unscientific way, that it must be like a computer system coming on line. Not every system is on at the same time – multiple services come on line in a consecutive fashion, often dictated by importance or the role of the system in it’s larger environment. By extension the body possibly brings up functions in a similar fashion. In my case vision and hearing come up last.

I’m drawing these similarities because I notice that seasoned fighters (at least in MMA matches) appeared to have that knock on the head and still function. It’s led me to spend some time thinking about the few minutes I’ve spent in that mode. It must be that these fighters are so well trained that they continue to function without sight or sound. At a preliminary glance that actually seems to be the case.

Unfortunately for me, my training doesn’t embrace this at all (probably best considering it might come with a concussion) so my immediate response is to stand dumbly as my hands slowly lower. I can’t help but wonder why I don’t fall down. Is it innate balance? I doubt it because I’m one the easiest guys to throw in class. Or is it that the balance system is still on line when hearing and vision are no longer?

Class last week was filled with innovative throws and one that took me over the leg of Dave didn’t allow me to get a good slap in ended up ringing my bell a bit and took me back to the place in between.

A Little More Action, A Little Less Conversation

2011-11-30T11:28:00.001-09:00

Teacher called me a little earlier in the day and asked me to teach a section on side kicks. He’s been experiencing some tendonitis in his arms and has been struggling with plantar fasciitis off and on over the years. So my responsibility was fairly low, but I thought about it all day and tried to get my thoughts organized for class.

When the time came I thought I was rather thorough, but after class I thought I might have gone on a bit much. I spent a good 20 minutes breaking the moves down and getting everyone to focus on the little things. Ah well, it was nice entry into the move to encourage thinking about the dynamics. Storm, the advance TKD kicker, brought up a conversation about putting a snap into a kick. He can put that last 5% of the move into nice twitch that really snaps beautifully, but trying to get folks to recognize that is really difficult. I finally told them that it was an advanced technique.

After class I met with Teacher for some beers and he wants me to take over the class for January while goes out of the country. So I’ll get more time in being the sensei. Hopefully I won’t have to do the kids class; of course I didn’t think about it till today.

On Choking

2011-11-23T12:07:00.001-09:00

I had Teacher around the neck in textbook choke when a pain shot through my arm. The next thing I noticed was that I was laying face down on the mat.

We had rare few folks show up last night due to the weather, so we got to work on some very advanced techniques. Normally this either fun or painful or both. It was more painful last night than fun, but it went quick.

Any technique that requires that delicate balance point of action and thought is absolutely difficult to me. I never realized I was such a strong rote learner as it relates to physical things. So when we change around things and I start to think most of what I do is plain and fairly unimaginative. This has a tendency to get me down pretty quick. When I see the others really exercise their imagination I’m very impressed because I bring nothing to the fight. I make the ideal Uke because of that quality.

So the first hour and some we worked on all our techniques from the knees to borrow from some of our Aikido lineage. This is something I don’t care for at all due to tender knees in the first place and then trying to take folks off their balance from that position means that I have to do the technique perfectly. That’s the reminder that I’m not as good as I think. I end up using muscle more than half the times I do the work. Thankfully I got to work with Dave most of the night so we laughed a lot.

The last part of class was devoted to escaping holds and chokes. Teacher likes to utilize a multi-axial approach to escape. The first point being that the escape needs to start before the lock is fully in place and synched down. After that he’ll do a draw down on the choking arm with one hand and then with other he’ll work over pain points with the other. These include the “funny bone”, small digit manipulation, knuckle strike to the back of the hand, and nerve roll on the forearm. The last one hurts so acutely that have to spastically try to get a way.

After a half hour of that I could barely move my arm, my neck was red from gi-burn and fingers barely worked. When the folks would exit the choke my fingers wouldn’t clear my body and end up getting bent backwards. Not a fun night in the scope of pain management, but surprisingly educational. This morning my arm feels heavy and sluggish.

Sticks And Stones

2011-11-18T11:51:00.001-09:00

I think I’ve used this title before, but it always seems appropriate after blocking kicks for a few hours.

The essence of these classes being that the best block is not being there or, at the very least, stopping it before it comes to full fruition. This is all and good, but I’m not Mr. Speedy so my ability to read a kick is really important.

The ability to read anything is tremendously important of course, but the kick I have really bad problems with is the outside crescent (or the axe kick). When the kick initiates it totally looks like a front snap kick and then I fall for the lower block and end wearing foot sunglasses.

Last night we pretty much reviewed all the kicks and all the potential blocks at infinitum, but I had to admit my pleasure in that I was gaining in flexibility and control. Normally, my back will let me know if I’m pushing it with it tail tell pull across the lumbar, but for whatever reason by the time we got to high, fast kicks my body was fairly ready to go. However, I’m very sore today and getting fairly stiff as the day goes on. Unfortunately, I’ve got legs day at the gym tonight. Ugh.

Tater–Crusher Of Children

2011-11-09T10:25:00.001-09:00

I’m not of huge fan of kids in general, but I’ve gotten better with more exposure to them in class. As a secondary instructor I do feel a little pride when they see me in town and say hi or I get told by parents how much I’m mentioned. Ego massage is such a great binder.

So last night I’m helping out Teacher with the kids. While they do upper blocks I’m supposed to walk around doing chops to their heads to make sure they are doing things correctly. In this case correct would be my downward strike being deflected.

A few of the kids didn’t have quite enough of an angle so I’d do the strike and they’d end up bopping themselves on the head with their own fists. I immediately felt guilty about that and wondered if they’d show up again for the next class. I think I’m probably over-analyzing again.

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In the regular class we barely had anyone show (10 seems small now!) and we focused on spinning kicks. I don’t recall ever having a whole class working on variations and drills and it was great fun, but old age snuck on me when I wasn’t looking.

Dave, Trucker and me are all roughly 45 by a few months and we all have limitations physically. Dave has rough knees and some flexibility issues, Trucker crushed a vertebrae and has constant back issues and then there’s me with my back and knees. Thankfully, my knees have been coming along because I haven’t been running, but my back has been playing around with me.

The exercise that started all this was the semi crescent block with one leg and then a jumping crescent with the other. Great fun, but my back would “pull” a lot of the time with one side. Very uncomfortable! We switched out to a roundhouse that rotated to a hook-kick. One out of ten felt dead on, but every poorly executed one sent electricity up my spine.

After cooling down a bit at the end of class I could barely get my sweat pants on. Dave said to me, “I wasn’t trying to be 20 again.” Swine.

PPP

2011-11-03T22:37:00.001-08:00

Piss Poor Posting

I've found it extremely hard to sit down and right about class for the last month, but tonight I'm pretty wound up and figured I spend a few minutes typing down some thoughts.

In the past few posts I've been focused on the new folks and how much they mean to our class. But I should have mentioned that there is this feast of famine dynamic that plays itself out. Consistency in numbers really helps everyone learn because we all build at relatively the same time. Each time new folks come we have to start out at the basics again to bring them up to speed. Since you don't know if they are going to stay you still have to go through the motions. We all also know that reviewing the basics is really fantastic, but it makes for a boring class. Teacher is fairly good at not letting that happen so I think we are relatively blessed in this capacity.

So tonight we had a family start. Three folks obviously very tight and interested in something new. However the Dad is probably around my age and this looks like it's going to be a challenge for him physically. None of then looked too bad through most of the class so they might end up staying. I'm more worried about the new gal, who's a blackbelt in TKD. If she doesn't integrate she'll take off and that would be sad. One of the nice things about her is that she is very attractive. After grappling with Dave (sweaty man hugging) it's a real pleasure to work with her. Plus she can kick like a mule. So, of course, I ended up hugging with Dave all night. Not that it's bad, but change is nice. The truth of the matter is that we work great together and there is no ego between us. It helps that we are the same age.

The new gal joined us as we addressed injuries tonight. I was concerned about my back which had been acting up in the last week - so much so that I took Tuesday night off. Of course with all the kicking we did tonight it hurts, but not in a bad way. We'll see tomorrow.

New Blood V.2

2011-10-21T09:36:00.001-08:00

I’ve long been a proponent of having new people come to class, but I really love new folks that come and have a lot of experience. We live on the outskirts of nowhere, on the edge of the world, but we have a highly transitional population and we occasionally get lucky. Case in point – last week we had a new young guy who was incredible motivated and appeared very excited to be in class, but never showed up afterwards.

This week we’ve had a new lady show up and she’s also from a TKD school. She has her black belt and appears to be enjoying our class, but you can see the confusion in her face at times because of the difference in teaching styles. I hope she stays because she brings in skill as well as having another lady in class. Our only other one is Swimmer, but she’s in High School and her schedule keeps her away from class frequently.

Elbow Strike to Face! (I was looking for an image of Confusion?!)

Judgment

2011-10-21T09:16:00.001-08:00

I’m a bit behind in posting because work has become very busy as of late and when I have a moment to myself I forget that I want keep some memory of what’s happened in class.

From last week -

Dave was worn to the bone. He got a tip that there was some free firewood and he filled up his trailer and truck and still decided to come to class the same day. While he yawned his way through class Teacher asked him about testing. Dave said that he was ready to go, so Teacher asked if he could do the test that night. He nodded his head wearily (I might be projecting…) and, boom, the test commenced during the 2nd hour.

Teacher had everyone sit down, which is standard for his type of testing, but had Dave remain standing. The additional surprise being that he had me remain standing as well. I presumed that we’d start with sparring, but that was unusual because this was just Dave’s Green belt. So Teacher had me join him at the head of the mat to help in testing. To be specific he was actually using Dave’s test to educate me to the process.

Not Dave’s Test (but came up under image search for Martial Arts Test)

During the test he would periodically turn to ask me what was next. To which he received my blank look. I think I made it abundantly clear that I cannot remember what was on tests, thus my making everyone fight way before it was required.

Poor Dave had to do a lot of waiting while Teacher and I mumbled together. I actually apologized a few times because I just didn’t know what Teacher was asking. Derp!

New Guy!

2011-10-12T09:54:00.001-08:00

It’s probably not a reason to get really excited, but after hanging out with kids class, which seems to be sticking to the 23 member level, the adult class can be a bit of a let down. We had 8 last night which is honestly a good number considered the space we have, but I honestly worry about us losing some of our numbers due to normal attrition.

So I was pleasantly surprised that a new guy showed up last night. On top of that he’s a young guy with a black belt in TKD! It’s like a dream to have energy and experience come into the class.

He’s a nice guy and was able to quickly learn whatever we were doing with a minimum of fuss. Teacher was nice enough to place me with him for basic punching drills. He was a bit shaky with our variation on it, but you could tell he knew what he was doing. Later, during the break, he did flashy spinning kicks with Storm. He’s certainly physically adept. Every time they do that flashy stuff I become a bit mournful, because I’m older and not really sure I can generate the physically adept synchrony to do any of what they are trying. I think I’m going to have to force myself to try some of it just to see if I can orient at high speed.

Week In Review

2011-10-07T14:01:00.001-08:00

I had to leave early last night due to a friend leaving town. Since we are on an island a lot of folks take the long ferry ride back to the main land to continue their journeys. Because the loading process is so cumbersome the time to say good bye can take a few hours. If someone has some problems with saying goodbye the stretch of time can be anxiety provoking. Case in point – last night our friend sprinted out the bar a full ten minutes before she had too. Not good at good byes.

Class on the other hand was a lot of fun, but I was panting. My glorious return to the gym has not occurred yet so I’m not getting any aerobic work in. I had a cholesterol test the other day that confirmed my last couple of months of inactivity. At least I’m under 200, but my ratio is just horrible. I can’t wait to see Dr. Sausage-Fingers this year.

The big highlight is that we’ve switched to evening hours and the kids class has restarted. Since I’m still shy of being involved with all those kids I go in a bit late to help out. This just means wondering the rows of children straightening shoulders and feet while Teacher explains and leads. When I showed up on Tuesday there was 28 children! That means that there is literally no room to move. Teacher was just down to punches and stances and absolutely no kicking. Crazy. By Thursday the class had reduced to 22 which mean they could move forward and back three steps. For the first time in 12 years he’s actually telling folks he doesn’t have room. They are actually going to have to call in a month to see if there is space.

Slideshow Update

2011-10-02T16:22:00.001-08:00

For years I've only had a few photos from my first few years at class. I just added a few of the most recent gang I've been working with. What a cast of characters!

Teaching With Little Sleep

2011-09-30T09:36:00.001-08:00

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.

Teacher Is Back!

2011-09-28T09:20:00.001-08:00

I was leading the warm-ups as usual and had just got to the sit-ups and felt that tell-tale pull in my neck. Figures – nothing like giving myself a tweaked neck before class has even started. Duh!

Not me – I’m lumpier in real life.

Teacher had called me during the day and sounded horrible. He’d picked up the flu or a bad cold during his travels and it was beating him up. He asked me to run the first hour while he slept and then he’d come on down.

He showed up while I was introducing distancing with the side kick. Most of the time distance is closed in the side kick via a step behind towards the Uke. In times of stress, like sparring, that step behind might not occur and it’s replacement is a shuffle. So the rear foot replaces the front foot in position. The trick is keeping your balance so you can still deliver a decent kick. Easier said than done.

We spent the rest of the evening working on locks and throws. The nice thing about having him back is that I can insert myself into the fun more, but I still had to instruct more often than not. It’s tough trying to tell someone what they are doing wrong when your upside down.

Classes 6 + 7

2011-09-23T09:25:00.001-08:00

The Cherub and I were doing some light hand work and for whatever reason he decided to pull a technique out of one of our katas that ended up going through every bit of my defense and plowed into the flesh over my nose and between my eyes. The unfortunate part of this being that he picked a spear hand. Traditionally a really advanced technique because it’s coupled with a lot of hand conditioning we don’t do. In reality if you pulled this technique you’d probably break all your fingers.

So The Cherub tags me once right between the eyes and the blood starts. Neither of us is aware that he’s cut me and somewhat concerned about his control I stop the action and asked him what he did. He shows me hitting me in the same exact spot! Gad.

There’s actually cuts there – I swear!

The Cherub. I imagine that he might come across odd to the average joe on the street. He has pale skin this side of sour cream, fairly bright red hair and very thick glasses. I think he’s around 15, but fairly physically advanced. The reason he seems pretty cool to me is that we met his brothers early on and they seemed really odd. Now that we have a new guy who has a lot of problems being socially appropriate (read: keeping his mouth closed) The Cherub is the model of the upstanding martial art student.
---

Tuesday went pretty well with another class of six folks. At the end the Twins and Robot pulled me aside and said that Teacher had told them that there we also going to get tested in the upcoming month. Based on that I figured that I needed to do another pre-test class (Thanks Uchi-Deschi!).

So last night we had nine folks and after the first half hour I was going to move over to test prep when, to my vast surprise, in walks Teacher! So I had to continue like he wasn’t there and constantly refer to him as if he wasn’t standing there. Kind of funny most of the time. “Well as you know Teacher like to see…”

He just got back to the states last night so he was totally off his schedule and still decided to come in. Ironically The Cherub had been at work since 5am and Dave had just got in at 6am. So a lot of sleepy faces in the crowd.

The only thing that caught me eye was when we were doing the sparring and one of the twins really stood out as being unflappably brilliant in his hand work. He would forget to use his feet, but still beautiful hand work.

Classes 5 + 6

2011-09-16T10:25:00.001-08:00

I’m having a hard time sitting down and typing for any period of time since I normally do these updates while I’m at work. That’s what keeps the brevity most of the time. For whatever reason work has picked up and so typing is broken in to a half sentence here and there. Keeping to any kind of theme is really difficult.

I think I’ve mentioned that I like using an outline for class, but gave it up because of the dependence it was creating. So for the last couple of classes I gave up on that and stuck with a loose two portion approach. For instance, last night I went with a blocking drill that I changed twice and then had a nice flow going so we could get a focus on in-fighting.

The second half of the class was split with kata and then throws. As a rule TSD doesn’t really have throws, but due to our local school roots we have a few hip and trip throws. Both ideas came out of our last class where I learned an important teacher lesson. Never put a exhausted guy back into sparring. Also Never go into sparring with an exhausted guy when you are not up to speed. Needless to say, I took some very hard lumps.

The match started with a kick to my testicles. After a rest break and restart I got behind Dave to which he immediately elbowed me way too hard and set me up for a throw. We were locked up and I figured I’d just step around his leg. Wrong. As soon as I moved my leg he took my balance and he threw me very hard. I had a great landing, but we weren’t using pads. He had to help me up. Let’s just say I was unable to make the 90 second goal I had set for myself.

Although it’s not a rule I would say that exhaustion also leads to horrible sparring. The reason I took a shot to the testicles was that Dave was just throwing out random things instead of planning.

So in class I wanted to work on hands in a tangle and various throws (on mats). I introduced the class to the tomonagi and the idea of a sacrifice throw (you are going to the ground to do the throw). After that we focused on throws based on driving one leg between your opponents legs.

I have to say that I really like doing the class and I thought it went pretty smoothly. Considering we only had 5 folks I tend to think that smaller classes are a bit more fun and easier to keep track of.

Class 4

2011-09-08T11:04:00.001-08:00

Or, “All by myself” <sung in a haunting way>.

This would be my first completely solo class and I chose not to have an outline sitting by the front of the class. I figured that it was creating a weird dependence in such a way that I couldn’t think outside the outline.

I’d planned to have two to three sections of class with leg work first and then our version of scaled down Aikido next. I was kind of taken by an idea suggested by Uchi Deshi when I asked him for some pointers. He said that if there is a student getting ready for testing that he’ll run through the exam several times and fine tune anything that needs work. Since we rarely know when Teacher is going to test this wouldn’t have worked out for us, but just before he left he told Dave that he would test him when he got back in September. I thought the next couple of classes could have a little time on focusing on his test.

So class started well and we blew past the hour mark while we were all into the kicking drills. After class I was going to work on kata so Dave could get some practice on his test specific one. I totally lost track of time after the break because we (I mean me) got engrossed in teaching hand grabs and locks. We ended the class on a “run”, which is to say we have one person standing at the head of the class while each person attacks in line so the person at the head can practice technique.

We never got to Dave, but we were close to running over and everyone had a good time and a good workout. Dave and I reviewed some notes from class and decided that I might want to reduce the amount of techniques taught at one time. Oops. I guess not everyone can drink from the fire hose.

Class 3

2011-09-02T16:33:00.002-08:00

Not much to say other than that by the break I was pretty much running out of ideas. Thankfully Teacher showed up to save the day. I really thought my outline was going to keep me going all the way through, but I realized my fanatical attention to the clock is not helping me here. I started precisely on time and then spent a fairly long time on warm-ups. That left around 35 minutes of instruction before the break. “No problem,” I think. Well, I was wrong. I had about ten minutes worth after words.

Teacher had me do everything up to that point including opening up the dojang and turning on the lights. I led the bow in and he didn’t show up until we got near the break.

At the end of class he told the class while he was gone for the next month that they’d all get to participate in my education. Boy, was I thankful for that. Everyone is being extra nice, but I thought that was even better.

Class 2

2011-08-30T21:33:00.001-08:00

Although not totally officially in charge of the whole thing I ran the complete class with Teacher periodically poking his head in at random times. The class was very respectful and called me Sensei throughout and the little outline I made worked very nicely, but I really needed Teacher to fine tune it. I was way too heavy on blocking and he had me modify a few parts.

Frankly I was impressed that I was able to get through the whole class without boggling too much and over focus on too many things. I think the trick will be getting through the first hour and having a segue way into the second.

During the break I showed Storm the easy break boards we’ve been using over the years as I had found out that he was a significant breaker when he was younger. He loved the wall mounted makiwari we’ve got, but can’t use (it would trash the wall) and even gave it a go on the black board. That is the one that we’ve only been able to break with an axe kick suspended on blocks.

Not me.

Of course after he bruised his knuckles on it everyone else gave it a try even after I told them about the axe kick. Ah youth, how I miss your unbridled enthusiasm.

Start Of Teaching

2011-08-27T12:58:00.002-08:00

It's not like I haven't taught a class or two over the years, but I've never done it as a Sensei so this week was a little stressful in that I wanted to be better at instruction. I'm not very relaxed, and tend to get hyper focused on one student. In an effort to make a somewhat smooth transition to teaching full-time (only for the month of September) Teacher has had me take the first hour of class this last week to help me dial in a bit more before he takes off. The class has been incredibly receptive and supportive, but my imagination only goes so far.

I can do about 70 minutes worth of instruction, but my well of originality dries up pretty quick after that. Since I don't have the ability to make stuff up on the fly I use the "build on to the next thing" method. I pick a technique and break it down to the essential pieces and start the class on those and work up to the technique. Depending on the technique I'll add in partner work or focus drills with pads.

Teacher mainly just had me slow down and stop focusing on the new guy, but overall he liked what I had to say and how I did it. He gave me a few important hints about time eating drills and how they can fill in between times where I might need to think about what needs to come next. He also had me change content mid stream as I was kind of exhausting the one area (legs in this case) pretty hard.

So this week, while he's still here I'll do the whole class twice before he heads out.

One thing I hadn't counted on was that when you are teaching you don't get to do a lot of doing. I'm going to have to figure out how to do that because I felt like I was missing out on practice. Bummer.

A Little More Test Stuff

2011-08-24T15:02:00.001-08:00

A lot of the Black Belt Test was standing for five to ten seconds while the board took notes and commiserated and, frankly, a lot of the stuff I did didn’t look overly impressive. So in order to keep your attention I made a highlights reel.

Some smooth things, others not so much.

Goodbye Look

2011-08-24T09:14:00.001-08:00

Teacher called me before class and talked about preparation for his month long departure. In a moment of drunkenness I volunteered to take the adult class while he was gone on vacation. Let me stress that I, in no way, feel comfortable with this task. For whatever reason I felt that there was an obligation to the class to continue on, but I sure as hell don’t feel like I’ll even do half the job that he does.

Noting my anxiety Teacher had me not only lead warm-ups, but do the first hour lead in. I was able to this without too much trouble, but honestly didn’t have a lot of ideas for the second hour. When I asked if I should continue at the hour break he took over to my relief. It’s going to be a long month for me and the class.
---
During a moment of quiet I noticed that Little Sister wasn’t in the class and asked Teacher if she had left already. He was somewhat mystified, but it became clear when she came in at halftime. She thought we went back to the Fall schedule this week.

We worked on trips and throws for the second hour, but near the end of class Teacher had us all sit down and had Little Sister stand alone. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but the air was filled with a lot of positive energy no matter what. Teacher announced that LS would be get to fight whoever she liked. She covered her eyes and spun and ended up picking him. After they finished a few minutes later I volunteered to go next and we tore it up! I ended up with a stubbed toe and and torn skin on my wrist. The remaining fights were pretty sterling and if Teacher could figure out how to get them off his Blackberry I’d post it here because we were awesome.

After class we took plenty of pictures, had lots of hugs, and promised we’d all keep in touch. Hopefully, we’ll see her during the college breaks.

A Little Black Belt Magic

2011-08-19T13:27:00.001-08:00

Teacher once told me his frustration with earning a black belt was that it didn’t come with a bag of magic tricks. I think he figured he’d be able to to jump to the second story and be able to single handedly defeat multiple magical warriors or something. Well, that’s my take on it anyway.

Since he told me that many years ago I’ve managed to keep my realistic hat one and not get too worked up about what would happen about achieving the belt. Mostly, I’ve felt that I haven’t deserved it or felt ready for it, but I did get to experience a little magic last night.

I noticed in the last two weeks that I’ve been able to pick up techniques after one exposure without any real difficulty. So I’ve decided to attribute this to the magic of the belt rather than the fact that I’ve been doing this for 8 years and that all the building blocks are in place to grab the pieces from other lessons and tons of practical experience. It’s totally the magic.

---

Storm, our black belt via TKD, has been studying our katas/hyungs and has pretty much memorized them all in about two months. He’s now on to the Black Belt ones that I’ve only recently dipped my feet into. Teacher asked us to try them together and we definitely had different impressions of what we seen. I went back to the tapes and had to correct a bit. We are both now on the same page.

Question – how long do we keep practicing basic katas? I stick with the more advanced ones so I don’t forget them, but when we go back to the first couple I stumble around because I forget them. Derp!

Outtakes

2011-08-18T14:48:00.001-08:00

Not the most fit guy in the room.

I started cardio and anaerobic training two months before the test in hopes that I wouldn’t look like this through most of the test. Alas, I did.

Black Belt Test Video

2011-08-18T09:02:00.001-08:00

Custom Kata

Teacher says, “it’s a kata a green belt could do, so you better do it like a Black Belt”. I thought it looked technically decent, but I wished I could have been lower.

First Day With A Black Belt

2011-08-17T07:41:00.001-08:00

I reached inside my gym bag with it’s signature Tang Soo Do fist at either end and pulled out my brand new Black Belt. I rolled it around in my hands a little and told the guys in the changing room that this was the first time.

Their response, “man I would have worn that around the house, “ and “I would have worn that naked around the house”. Good men all.

Teacher called me Sensei Tater at one point to which I ducked my head. I really don’t feel like I’m a Sensei, since such a large part of the class has been there for awhile and know my good and bad points intimately. Still, I can see where the change in thinking and pride in my accomplishment has started taking place. At my wife’s birthday party I was doing falls to rolling standups in the front lawn while delivering drinks and then teaching folks how to do come-along wrist and should locks. What a dork I am.

I spent most of the class working with our newest and youngest student trying to get her up to speed on the basics. We might be a bit beyond her skill acquisition level, but I’ll have to let Teacher figure that out. I’m not sure what he does to decide if they go into adult or youth class, but folks like this gal fall right on the line.

In a moment of insanity about a month or so ago I told Teacher that I’d be willing to take the class for the month of September while he’s out of town. I feel somewhat sorry for the class since they are going to see me learning to teach all over again. Tough on me and tough on them. I’ll probably start to relax by the time Teacher gets back.

Post Test Notes

2011-08-12T13:05:00.001-08:00

Long story short – I passed my Black Belt test.

I’m filled with all sorts of emotions; pride and disappointment being the most prevalent.

The test lasted about a half hour and consisted of running me through a variety of basic techniques like kicks and strikes, then pad, or focus mitt, drills. I then performed Pyung Ohn Sa Dan, Oh Dan, Bassai and my test kata. They had me do my test one twice. The final section was fighting. I did four or five matches which couldn’t have been more than 30 seconds a piece and finished it up with a three against me match.

I’m proud that I’ve accomplished the belt, but I was disappointed in that I wished I could have shown a better performance to the judging panel. I have yet to see the tapes (just thinking about it is making me nervous), but even during the test I have to admit I didn’t look or feel very sharp at times. That coupled with my constant need for air made for a lot of breaks. When I cobble together the video I can guarantee that will be left out.

After each section of the test and even during sub sections the panel would stop to take notes and commiserate while I gasped and wheezed. At one point one of the panel came up and did a breathing exercise with me just to help. Pretty embarrassing. But it wasn’t like I could say I was fine, because I literally couldn’t.

During the focus drills that same panel member wanted to see combinations with a leg focus and he actually asked me, “do you have a favorite kick”? Best thing I’d every heard, but we’d just done snap kicks so I choose crescents and during one of the runs my left ankle made a sizable impact on his left elbow. Owww. My left ankle is somewhat swollen today.

I got chided for turning and walking away at one point (watch your back!) and got pointers throughout the test which I’m sure I should be taking at just a pointer, but internally I kept groaning at what I thought were obvious errors I shouldn’t be making.

I could keep writing about this until I was blue in the face, but to sum it up everyone gave me a lot of compliments and Teacher seemed genuinely pleased that I did as well as I could. My personal shame was that I was not in the shape that I clearly needed to be.

What compounded that feeling was when I was later read the score sheets, that pretty clearly pointed at mediocrity, to which my wife could only agree with. While she is no martial artist she has a shrewd eye as it relates to performance in any area. She’s seen me in several competitions and has a sense of how I move and definitely knew how nervous I was. When I searched my gut I realized that it was true when I’d rather have been excellent.

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I was proof-reading this and if it sounds like I’m being hard on myself – I am. I’ll try to embrace my achievement and give it the respect it’s due.

One Day To Go

2011-08-10T08:43:00.001-08:00

Anxiety seems to lead to a lack of sleep, which in turn, allows anxiety to fester. Not the greatest way to approach the upcoming test, but it’s also not a surprise either. I usually martial through all of this and do okay, but the nagging lack of energy I’m experiencing is making me frustrated.

On Monday I went for an epic run (5k, cross country) and did better than my first time on that course, and assumed that I’d sleep like a corpse, but I ended up wide awake only getting minimal sleep. So getting to class last night took a huge amount of energy on my part.

On top of that Teacher ran a pretty physically demanding class (or maybe I was just so tired it felt that way). At the end of class I’d completely soaked my gi, but so had the rest of the guys.

Teacher had me demonstrate my kata/hyung at the end of class and everyone said it looked sharp. I have to admit I was pleased as well because I did it with a lot of intensity and did it correctly. Teacher had only one suggestion which should be easily installed (slow down in one area).

If I can do a big carb laden dinner tonight and tomorrow for lunch I’m hoping things will go well in the energy area.

Prep Time

2011-08-08T21:41:00.002-08:00

Teacher called me up today and told me that the test will be held on Thursday. That was a hard call because of the adrenaline spiking off my kidneys. I was breathing fast and sweating long before we finished the call. Although he didn't tell me not to be nervous, he did tell me that I'd do fine. It's funny, but I have never found that to help much. Possibly it'll sink in by the test time, but I do such a great job of being nervous on my own that I will be a bit of a wreck.

An additional stressor is that my wife has decided to come to the test. She's never seen one and knows that this is kind of a big deal to me. At least she'll have video proof so I'll be able to post highlights of a sort.

This is what I know. It will be an hour, I'll have three Sensei's running the test (just like my Brown with the same guys), I'll do three katas including my own, Sensei Grant will test my knowledge on technique execution (oh crap what?!) and then I'll have to fight the whole class. Sensei Slim is an unknown so those two guys (him and Grant) are really what makes me nervous. Sensei Grant has said in not so many words that our school maybe not as tough as he would have preferred. So his portion of the test is to grind me down until I see the black spots.

To come up to level of expectation I've been running with Dave. I've only done this twice and it's an excellent reproduction of the physical state of the test. For instance our run tonight was 31 minutes, which is a record for me, but the absolute soul-sucking lack of oxygen and inability to move my limbs is completely like Sensei Grant's portion.

I'm not saying I'm going to be any better of course, but I'll be familiar with the state and hopefully my mind will be able to handle it better.

Tests–Little Sister is Brown

2011-08-05T14:40:00.001-08:00

I guess the season must be upon us because Teacher let me know that he was testing Little Sister last night. She’s been there for probably four or five years now and she’s leaving us for College at the end of the month.

We started class as usual, but halfway through the second hour we sat down for the test. Although we didn’t the three Black Belts Teacher ran her through a wear down for about 15 minutes before her kata and fights. She looked good, but Teacher changed things out, but having her fight a majority of the class one minute at a time. I’d actually never seen her wrung out before and by the time she completed with Teacher (the last bout) she was bleeding out a loose thumbnail and could barely keep her arms up.

Previously to her testing we were working on up close fighting and I was partnered with Dave. Alas I took a shot to the face and ended up getting rocked on my heels. I thought I was going to lose a tooth, but everything turned out fine. Although he’s got a cut on a knuckle very much like the one he gave me last month!

Not me, but what I felt like.

Teacher ended the class, but asking when I’d like to test. I guess we’ll be trying next week if he can gather the other Black belts. I’m getting nervous just typing this out!

Training update 2

2011-07-31T13:46:00.003-08:00

I'm up in the mountains with my family for a little reunion and the place I selected is a Spa/Hotel. I'm sure the discerning traveler could write up tons of commentary on how the place looks and feels. I can only say statement, "workout heaven"! The facilities here are ridiculous. And I mean that in a great way. One full floor of gym equipment, exercise studios, and seating areas for chilling out. That doesn't even hold a candle to the spa itself. The spa is split by gender so the men and women enter and leave by different entrances. Both of their areas contain lounges, steam baths (with euchilypis) and so on. The shared area has water falls over hot tubs to use gravity power to pound your shoulders into putty while you bravely smile to the other folks in the soaking pool.

So I bravely put the onus upon myself to exercise as frequently as possible. Strangely, I'm not able to pull the epic workouts I'd like to, but I'm still able to work out everyday and get a good caloric burn. My trouble is that I can't make the anaerobic threshold I was hoping for. The equipment is very difficult to sort out, but they have a tv on everything. So I was unable to sort a decent interval training, but I was able to watch HBO comedy while I was doing it.

I thought I was going to relax today, but got up and worked out anyway. My legs just feel so heavy, but my test kata is coming along fairly well. I've targeted areas that I need to work on, but the progress just seems so slow. When I get back Teacher is going to want to know when I want to test. It's definitely this month for sure.

Training Log Update

2011-07-31T05:11:00.002-08:00

I'm currently on vacation and the heat is unbelievable! I don't recall this kind of heat - ever. Of course where I'm coming from, at a full third of what I'm experiencing doesn't lead me to making the best decisions as it comes to the out of doors.

The first day I got here I figured I'd better get out and run. I think it was in the high 80s and by the time I got back I thought I might be near a stroke. I stayed in a cold shower for as long as I can handle it and still didn't stop sweating for another couple of hours.

The next day I accompanied my Father to his gym figuring the temperature would be a lot better and used the fancy treadmill to set up an interval training run. This worked successfully and I was able to get two miles in, but didn't push my anaerobic threshold too much. Some light weights and I was good to go. However, during the each uphill interval I silently cursed Dave and my PT for this type of exercise. I imagine I should have been doing it years ago, but to have it rubbed in my face and be so bad at it makes me have to direct that frustration somewhere.

Test Training Log: I Hate Dave

2011-07-26T10:19:00.001-08:00

Ever mindful of how grueling the Brown belt test was, my focus has been directed at my cardiac fitness. Luckily one of my friends is a physical therapist and has a impressive knowledge in sports training. Unfortunately, he reckons that I need to focus on anaerobic exercise as it matches my level of activity during testing.

About two or three weeks ago I tried emulate what that might be by taking a look at various workouts on-line and mirroring what I could. My normal workout is kata, rowing machine, kata, burpees, etc. If I can do 40 minutes I’m impressed with myself. I’ve estimated that 170 bpm is my anaerobic threshold and my PT has told me that I need to get up there and work at that for 30 seconds or more and then bring it down to 165 or less for a few minutes and then drive it back up.

So Dave calls me up and asks me to go running with him as part of his routine and I think to myself, “what a great idea. I’ll be able to confirm my level of fitness in an objective fashion”. I told Dave that I’d probably be able to do a mile, but after that I couldn’t say. No problem we’d run as far as we could, follow it up with walking and then sprint up hill on a 5K course. I should have known ahead of time that I’d be pushing myself well beyond my capabilities.

The first mile was entirely pleasant, I was pushing 160+ most of the time so a small hill would blast me past 170. It’s the perfect interval training! And then we got to mile 2. I wasn’t blacking out, but I definitely just couldn’t get enough air – what a horrible feeling. Objectively, I thought this was really exactly what I needed, but subjectively the feeling of suffocation is about as worse as it gets for me. On top of that Dave looked very relaxed and not out of breath at all. If I had the energy I would have been bitter and jealous.

By mile three I was mostly walking fast but he had designed his course with the hills at the very end of the track and as agreed upon earlier we had to run up the hills. Perfect for anaerobic work, but now my legs weren’t cooperating. The simply weren’t functioning. I’ve heard people say that it’s like moving through molasses and I would say that was very accurate, but on top of that I couldn’t breath. On the last hill I was faltering and had to restart the running many times and just fell over at the top. Dave hauled me to my feet and made me walk around for another 10 minutes. He’s the devil.

When I was somewhat rested I wanted to show him my test kata and could barely get through it. No balance or strength. Yikes.

Today I feel like someone beat me with hammers. Ugh.

A Miss and A Hit

2011-07-23T10:54:00.001-08:00

I had to miss Thursday night class because of work pushing it’s nosey requirements into my life. I had some visiting folks from the mother ship in the big city and had to squire them around. It’s not like they were bad or anything, but I had to get them back to the airport after an exceedingly long day. I just had to remind myself, “this is why I get paid”.

Class was still going on for a bit when I showed up so I said hi and made an appointment to hang out with Teacher on Friday. I’d put together a few more pieces and parts to my kata and wanted to find out if I was going in the correct direction. Here’s were I’m at, but I’ve got a slightly different ending after the double punches.

Struggling wit the awesome.

Instead of the jumping axe at the end I’ve got some hand work. Teacher made it very clear – “This is a kata that a green belt can do, but you’d better be doing the techniques all at a Black belt level”. Yikes!

Test Info and Notes

2011-07-20T10:13:00.001-08:00

I talked to Teacher this weekend and told him that I’d gotten a bit further with my test Kata and was hoping to meet up with him to check my progress. I really didn’t want to be moving on and have him rework a bunch of my stuff. I’m not terribly smooth with the few things I have so to have major changes would be a bit anxiety producing.

We met early yesterday and I went through my starting sequence, one long pass and second sequence. Teacher corrected a few pieces and changed around the entry and substance of the second pass. I feel kind of bad because he’s such a part of it and won’t have any surprise, but I’m guessing he wants me to look good in front of the other Teachers.

Needless to say I’m getting rather excited by the test, but not having a clear idea of when it’s going to occur makes me a bit anxious. Preparations for something nebulous make me nervous of course, so I’m just focusing on the kata and my cardio. Currently I’m using my rower every other day to grind out 5000 meters and that pushes my endurance to it’s limit. It’s roughly around 25 minutes at 160 bpm. I follow that with kata work and I can burn 500+ calories in a hour. I’m hoping the alternating exercises will pay off in the sparring and whatever they throw at me.

Dave has offered to take me on a running date, but I’m not much of a runner. However, I’ll try to make a mile on Friday night on his normal 3 mile cross country course. It’ll be a good measurement of muscles and fitness.

As usual, the ramp up to testing brings Teacher Slim out of the woodwork. It felt like a year since I’ve seen him in class, but he was in his regular jovial mood and still applied a wonderfully painful twist to everything we did. I mention his presence because for my Brown Belt test he simply asked me to spell Tang Soo Do. I was grateful for the rest break, but I couldn’t spell to save my life. At the end of class he asked me some basic Karate terms in Japanese. I only know a few of these, but wondered if he was going to ask me that on the test. I just made my flash cards!

Kata Progress And Notes

2011-07-18T08:36:00.001-08:00

Now that my system seems to have settled from my vacation I’ve been focusing on fitness and my kata. Although this won’t help me aerobically or anaerobically I thought it was pretty kick ass.

Such a simple set and so good.

My kata is coming along finally. I don’t have anything very fancy so the form is a standard “I” shaped form. I’ve taken some hand techniques from our 10th hyung, Neihan Shi Cho Dan, but Teacher has had me simply focus on things that I do well and where I can demonstrate that I’ve mastered the technique (balance, execution, etc.). I’ll try to get some video of that so I can check my own progress and express chagrin at my horrible performance.

Post Vacation Shake Down

2011-07-15T08:37:00.001-08:00

I went down to Central America to visit my wife for a couple of weeks and had a great time, but as it relates to my practice I was pretty bad. Our schedule is usually very compressed so there is little time or space to practice kata or technique. However, during long rides I was able to start the mental work on my Black Belt test kata. I’ve got the first eight moves nailed down and after last night I’m ready move to the next four or five.

Upon return to the States I ran into a rather frustrating phenomena – persistent diarrhea. It was if as soon as I had water in Northern America my body went into total shock. I’ve been home almost a week now and I’ve been barely able to get through a work day and I definitely haven’t been to the gym. After a four days of meds I thought I could do class last night, but I was dragging hard. One of Teacher’s favorite questions is, “are you alright?” when I’m panting. Last night the answer was, “no”.

Each day I’ve been incrementally better, but today seems to the closest to a low level of regular health. This weekend I’ll construct the next four moves or more. And then try to get a bit of cardio in. Boy do I look skinny.

Oh Snap!

2011-06-21T22:01:00.003-08:00

Teacher says, "you're going to freak out."

"About what", I reply.

He says, " I want to talk about your next test".

Ironically that's exactly what I wanted to talk about when he asked me to hang out after class for a beer. Although I wasn't really thinking he was going to bring this up. Recently I'd been kind of wondering what was next in the chute. We don't have a formal system of how to determine belt testing so I'd kind of thought maybe I needed to ask what kind of horrible things he had in store for me for my next rank. Only there was a rub.

"I wanted to let you know that I want to test you for your black belt" he said rather straight forwardly.

Internally the hyper ventilating hit a seismic pace. Externally my pupils dilated and I just sputtered. I actually said, "I don't know what to say," which is pretty much what all the cool guys say when faced with an epic life experience. I will say this, I never for a moment said, or even thought, I don't deserve this. In retrospect I kept thinking to myself that I'm not ready for this, but he brought up some very important points.

He said, "it's been 8 years."

He said, "maybe I've been too demanding with my requirements for this." With which I don't agree, but I was still stuttering.

I was going to be a one in a thousand!!!

I think the gist was that he may have thought I might have been good to go earlier, but was coming to terms with a couple of things in his own martial development and realized that I was, indeed, qualified in my own, weird way.

Here's the test:

- beatings

- construct my own kata

Deceptively simple with a ghastly undertone. The beatings will be multiple and exhausting. By this I mean that I will have to have the cardiac fitness to survive the black belts in town and still look like I was conscious about my choices in sparring. Woof! After that I'll have to do a kata (or maybe before, you never know) of my own device. I need to be sure that I make it worthwhile and highlight moves that I'm good at. Dang. This is going to be tough.

---

Class tonight was awesome. Strangely it started with katas/hyungs. He made us do them at a very slow rate which focused us on the balance and movement. It's not like we hadn't done this before, but today it sunk in kind of deep. Segue ways aren't just a ham-handed conversation migration, they are a way to move from stance to stance.

The second hour was pretty much all fights. We started with the slowest combat analysis and moved on to sparring. I don't think I've seen so many interesting conflicts. Me and Trucker went around for five minutes and I really didn't do a great job, but I was pleased with my ability to make the choices I did. Nothing unplanned. He still rolled me in the end which was met with great delight by the crowds. Oh to be a gladiator.

My second match was with Teacher and it went surprisingly well. In the end I realized I couldn't do anything substantive and went in for a bad trip/bear hug and fell on him. He managed to turn me on the way down and I absorbed the impact for both of us. Ooff. End of class!

Honestly, I don't think I'd ever seen so many great matches. He let us choose who we wanted to spar and in a way it was pretty awesome. The two youngest kids put up an epic fight. I was surprised that there was no blood. Were we showing control? Shocking!!

Catch Up

2011-06-15T09:26:00.001-08:00

I just realized that I haven’t posted since last Tuesday due to a rather busy schedule. My wife is out of town for the summer so I’m doing all the stuff around the house that would normally be divided between us. As usual I forget that although it’s not a lot of stuff, it’s still more than I do normally so I have less time to dawdle.

To add to general frantic nature of my day Teacher moved up the summer classes one hour. So we get out early, but we have to get there early. This means I’m moving fast after work. I basically have enough time to change and eat a bit before I hit the ground running.

So I can’t actually recall what we did last week, and even last night was a bit of a blur, but we did have a couple of stand out moments.

We call generic multiple attack scenarios “monkey in the middle”. However due to the latest racial sensitivity problems I believe the word monkey is going to get dropped. It consists of 5 person groups in which one participant stands in the middle and the other four try to attack in a consistent fashion. It has nothing to do with real life, but it forces the person in the middle to contend with strikes initiated from every angle and not get tunnel vision for one person. It also forces us to work on strikes that are really effective versus flowery locks and such.

What we found out is that kicks to the groin and strikes to the throat were very popular, then came kicks to joints and so on. Very focusing.

Feet, Don’t Fail Me!

2011-06-08T12:04:00.001-08:00

Teacher quote for the week: as I tried to tap out of a rather painful lock – “you look like a penguin flapping it’s wings to stay warm.” Nice.
---
All of us looked like we ran across hot coals as we uncomfortably moved from one foot to the other or stared at the soles of our feet. This was a direct result of the new rubberized sports floor put in several months ago. Unfortunately kicks that require foot rotation are miserable because feet don’t want to turn at all on rubber. I was noticing after my shower later that night I had actually torn the flesh between the toes and ball of both my feet. This morning I was was walking very carefully. Hopefully, they’ll be mostly healed by tomorrow night.

Since I was only there for the first hour I didn’t get to experience anymore discomfort. However, in that 45 minutes I was huffing and puffing. My poor diet and lack of sleep really felt like they were weighing on me. Hopefully, I’ll be back on a more even keel by the end of the week.

Shame

2011-06-03T11:46:00.001-08:00

I knew, in those microseconds before, during and after my fist making a sickening crunch, that we had gone too far.
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As part of the summer Teacher moves the class up an hour so we can get out and enjoy the long sunny evenings. Unfortunately, the class hasn’t adjusted to this change so we are in variety of states. Personally, I was half a bubble off – dropping keys and bumping into things all day. Dave was so hungry that he had dull eyes and we had the addition of two news kids in the class.

We were learning how to integrate the long punch into our regular work. This is move comes from our 3rd kata (Kee Cho Hyung Sam Boo) in which the punch ends up out to the side, but the force is generated by a massive hip rotation. I’ll have to do a video of this because it’s emphasis is totally neglected in videos I plowed through today. Anyway, while were learning to do this Teacher decided to throw in an odd block in which you spin you opponents arm in a large spiral so you can move in to do a standing triangle choke (yet another video to make!). However the timing was tougher than I imagined so I managed to only get things going after 10 minutes. By that time we had run out of class time.

I was getting very frustrated which in turn makes me worse at everything I’m doing. Which is why we are back at the first sentence.

Teacher says, “Do a little rondori for the last five minutes.” We usually interpret this as very slow sparring to work on technique and strategy. Since I was frustrated and discombobulated our speed immediately took off and I couldn’t get a hit in to save my life. Out of the five minutes I had one minute in which I was able to pick out Dave and take advantage of his approach, but by and large he was eating me up.

Our exchanges got wilder and in one of my poorly executed kicks I ended up getting kicked in the ass so hard that I had a hard time walking this morning. In the final hurrah I shot a punch over a blocking arm, unfortunately Dave was moving at the time and he got my knuckles in his mouth. Blood starting running out of his fat lip and my hand. I was appalled.

I have never lost that kind of control and been so emotionally unfocused. What a horrible lesson. Thankfully Dave didn’t take it personally even though I was all over the board myself. When I called him today he was just counting his wounds and I started worrying about the cut on my hand – blood born infection is always a worry. Neosporin do you work!

Revelations

2011-05-25T10:44:00.001-08:00

My first years in TSD were marked with frequent “Aha!” moments. Over time those became sporadic as the learning of new skills was overtaken by the refinement of those very same skills.

As of the last few years they have become far and few between. I was warned of this by Teacher and haven’t really thought about it much until something struggled to the surface about three weeks ago. Teacher is very clever and adaptable at times so a move he promotes may not exactly come from the Big Tang Soo Do book or his older practiced styles. However, he’ll do them if they work and have a minimum of cons.

So about three weeks ago we were working on entering our opponents space using the simple zenkutsu stance. At first I was uncomfortable with giving my back to the opponent, but with the proper loading and speed I believe it to be a great set up for a throw.

After a few weeks of testing this out it dawned upon me that I needed to try this out somewhat formally. Bob, at Striking Thoughts, acted as a Catalyst via some email discussions about being tall and trying to throw.

Here you can see a big dork talk about it:

Super Awesome Horribleness

---

The second realization was that experience does have a place! One of the young guys in class, Ken, is incredibly gifted. I only have to show him a technique once and he does it perfectly. However when I tell him why we do it that way he gives the look that guys in the video have – blank, but humoring the happy lummox.

When Teacher and I were reviewing the evening he put it this way: “Anybody can shoot a gun. A person with innate talent can shoot well, but if you ask them to shoot in the rain, in the wind, while someone is shooting at them it’s a different story. That’s why Blackbelt mills can be construed as dangerous. The give the belt based on physical ability, but not necessarily the rationale behind what’s occurring or the wisdom to use any of the knowledge correctly.”

All in all – a wonderful night.

On Thinking And Being

2011-05-20T16:30:00.001-08:00

It is a rare thing that I have anything near to what I would call “clarity of thought”. I imagine it would be like having the same train of thought for more than a few minutes at a time. Although I’m self-diagnosing I am pretty sure I was one of those kids who was squirrelly and distracted all their lives that was later to be called ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) by the medical establishment. Thankfully I had a parent that was very good with behavior management, but I remember the struggle of trying to focus during years of school, but having to contend a mind that flew about like a flock of birds on the wind.

Over the years I was able to develop some skills to contend with that inability and found that several things really helped. One of those being Martials arts or some intense physical activity. Ironically reading did the same thing assuming that I like the material of course.

So when I sit down to type about what happened the night before I can only recall a few of things we did and get very frustrated over the fact that I can’t recall the things I did successfully or why they worked.

When I add stress to the mix my mind gets even worse. A common occurrence is that I will try to do to things at once and end up spinning in place – literally. The result of having two competing thoughts turn into action. My wife knows when I’m out of control when she saw me go in one direction and then the other and finally end up spinning on the ball of one foot.

This lack of mental cohesion has increased because my wife is leaving for three months to go to an immersive language school out of the country and my single co-worker is leaving for a month’s vacation.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not not good with singularity, but I usually do just fine after the first week. I just have to create a routine and stick to it. A personal kata that doesn’t require a lot of thought. Not a great way to go through life, but at least the plants get watered and I remember to cook for myself now and then.

---

Class notes from last week.

Storm got his first green stripe. Teacher is going to test him once a month to get him up to his real rank. His take on our first kata was pretty cool because it looked like it was all TKD instead of TSD.

Teacher reintroduced the low horse stance. 60 seconds of thighs parallel to the ground. Followed by massive kicking exercises. Bad ass!

Backfist To The Dome

2011-05-13T08:39:00.002-08:00

I don't know about the folks out there, but there is a couple of moves that have an automatic follow-up move. The one I see most (and also do myself) is a side kick that's followed up with a spinning back fist. We do it so often that when we are sparring we almost automatically raise our arm to block when someone even hints at doing a move after a failed side kick.

That being said, during the evening's sparring I neglected to raise my hand to block since I figured two things; 1. that my opponent was too far away and 2. he could control his strike. I was wrong on both accounts. Dave is my height but must have slightly longer arms. So the back fist did come and I did not have my hand up. Dave also did not have the control I would have liked to see. This led to a perfect placement of his two knuckles on my side of my head at the hat line.

I had to shake that off but I swear I could feel the fluid filling the new dent in my dome. Before I went to sleep I looked into the mirror hoping that I would have a nice bruise the next morning. Unfortunately just a little headache and nothing to show for it.
---
Class had a total of three students last night. This is a classic dilemma for our town. We rarely have sunshine, but we've had it for 3 days in a row and that means we'll lose class numbers fast. So Dave, Ken and me practiced two step sparring and regular sparring for two hours. Super fun, but tiring. Teacher broke it up a bit by having us do something along the lines of an Aikido exercise. Uke strikes and we block and take the hand. At the same time we turn fully to capture and allow Uke to keep moving (and helping him) and then set up a wrist lock for a throw. This is usually the Kotegoeshi (wrist twist), but with our variation.

In the few Aikido classes I've been in the move is usually performed with the Uke at arms length so he can't punch you. Whereas we keep Uke close to us and use an elbow in the face to "soften" him. It give us a lot of power, but it keeps Uke close so if the move isn't done well then you get bashed.

Teacher then had us move to practicing blocks and grabs at real speed. This is something I don't feel I do particularly well, but this practice was excellent and I was able to move reasonably well and get a few positive grips and move into a serviceable lock.

Las Manos de Piedra y Sangre

2011-05-06T14:55:00.002-08:00

What with all the hullabaloo around the last couple of UFC fights in which the winner employed a front kick to end the match, has made me dying to integrate the move into our sparring. It’s not that we don’t use it all the time, but the simplicity of the move and my innate flexibility in that area really calls to me.

The only problem is that Teacher has been somewhat reticent to reintroduce sparring because of the plethora of plebeians (I love alliteration). For some reason we had a very light class last night and it was mostly experienced folks. That means that we’d have a better possibility to spar if Teacher ran out of energy making up class content. Luck was on our side as we had ten minutes of class left after practicing kata for 30 minutes.

I got to spar with one of wonder twins and found to my dismay that a slowly performed front kick is easily blocked. What made it worse was his block was horrible. Normally performed the downward block would be more than adequate to stop my half strength kick. However the Twin either didn’t see the kick starting or he started the block really late. Regardless, the top of my foot met up with his elbow while it was faced downwards.

It’s not that this kind of thing doesn’t happen all the time, but for whatever reason my foot got his elbow just right. And by that I mean wrong. When I was getting out of the shower this morning I noticed the obvious swelling and tenderness. Even my wife took a second glance at the apparent blob on top of my foot.

The second match was with the new guy, Storm. He holds a black belt in TKD and doesn’t really used his hands very much in sparring which makes me think he must be from a sports based school. Anyway our interactions would go between badly timed hand exchanges or hopping up and down closely waiting for an opening for a well placed kick. His youth and vigor definitely won out.
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The title of the post is supposed to say “hands of stone and blood”, but I’m really unsure of my Spanish. But you have to admit even if incorrect it sounds great. The rationale behind the title is that I’ve been going through a hand hardening regimen for a couple of years now. Not that it’s much, but I was hoping to lead to a more solid foundation for my mitts.

It’s three steps now days. I have a brick that I backfist and punch (very lightly) 40 to 50 times, I do all my push ups on my first two knuckles (also the same striking spot) and finally added in finger pushups in the last year. I presumed that it would lead to a harder hand and stronger wrist. Since I’ve neglected the knife hand edge strikes in this regimen it appears that it’s the weakest link. During the sparring last night where our blocks seemed poorly timed I ended up blocking with the back of my hand toward the knife edge. Now I’ve got some nice hand bruises to go along my skins, forearms and foot.

Lucky Wishbone

2011-05-03T22:10:00.001-08:00

I was standing in a moderately deep stance as Swimmer went into zenkutsu (lower stance with one leg bent and the other straight) between my legs. With a sharp twist of her shoulders my front leg went out and forward and my rear was already kind of straight and going no where. My only escape was to fall backward and hope that I could take the stretch I didn’t seem built for. Mental screaming ensued.

It seemed like a nice evening, filled with bonhomie, laughter and effervescent spirit. This should be a warning after all this time; it usually means that focus isn’t on the mark and something is going to get mangled. The first sign – me blocking a kick with an open hand and jamming my ring finger. Nothing bad, but it stung liked I bent it sideways. I was being over dramatic as usual.

Next, as we working on weapons attacks I took a escrima stick from Dave as he swung for my head, but I messed up the technique and we became tangled and the stick fell from his grasp and clocked me on the head. I had to do a few moments of the pain dance before I get back into focus.

The third and final was working with Swimmer. Teacher is very slow about introducing throws into the class, but today was a natural lead in. We were to enter our partners stance and basically trip them with a shoulder twist and slight hip move. Swimmer was doing fantastic until Teacher changed her footing and then the wishbone occurred. I’d like to say that I’m overacting, but it hurts so much because I don’t think my hips joints can move beyond what we are asking of them. It’s not that my groin gets pulled either. It’s just pure pain. I rolled on to my back and just gritted my teeth. I didn’t care what I looked like, but just like always the intense pain stops in a few moments, but it’s actually hard to stand up and remain standing. After about two minutes I’m ready to go. Frustrating, because it’s really effective and I’m not really I can produce a counter.

Teacher finished the class by reminding us that although we were having a really fun time we needed to be concentrating on breathing and focus. I feel like that was my responsibility somewhat since I set the mood during stretching and warm up. I’ll have to concentrate on being a bit more serious.

Kick And Falls

2011-04-27T16:19:00.001-08:00

Kicks, kicks and more kicks. I had hoped that we do some kicking to get that extra bit of exercise. My balance felt good as well. Some nights that’s not the case, but for whatever reason the I was still and centered. Teacher started us off with side kicks and I’d forgotten how doing even 40 can be exhausting. He kept us going by then adding a second kick (lower) without touching the floor between. Presumably to break the habit of going to the floor, but definitely forcing work on balance. Unfortunately I was out of breath with minutes. I’ve returned to holding my breath?!

After break we pulled the matts out for a little ground work and minor aikido. I did the first rolls and falls in 4 to 6 months. It was like I’d never stopped, but I was very nervous about bending my spine. I ended up doing about 6 warm up rolls and stopped there. I took about 20 falls with no problems whatsoever.

The fascinating part of falls part of the evening was that Teacher had everyone work on falls and it was really nice to see everyone do a reasonably decent job. The worst thing was that folks just had a horrible tendency to reach back or bring the elbow down first. As main thrower I’d try to ease them down so they’d slap a bit instead of hit hard, but that was absolutely brutal to my back even with super great posture. I guess when we do this next time I’ll be doing a lot of dropping (of people).

Overcoming Exhaustion

2011-04-20T14:48:00.001-08:00

My wife and I recently got a new cat as the house felt pretty empty. I sure with deep introspection we’d probably see that both of us needs to focus on something other than ourselves. Whatever the case the cat provides energy and focus at the house, but it means that a lack of sleep is back into the fore if we don’t make an effort to exercise the cat during the day.

Based on the cat’s behavior we assume that she sleeps all day and then remains awake during the evening. This is exhibited by her sleeping on us, talking to us, sitting on us and cleaning noisily.

As I mentioned in the past I have occasional problems with sleeplessness. The cycle goes something like two nights of bad sleep followed by a night of deep sleep. If I’m lucky I’ll keep on a good schedule for awhile until the next sleeplessness comes up.

You may be asking yourself what this has to do with anything martial. Well, the truth is probably not too much, but sleeplessness has a direct impact on my ability to pay attention and I notice that I’m definitely clumsier in general.

So the notion of going to class at 7 after I’ve been relaxing for a couple of hours is a mental fight. I have to force myself to get up and get moving. Then when I get to class I have to carefully warm up or pull the crap out of some muscle I didn’t know existed.

Short story long – I was yawning so much by the end of class I could hear the other students ears pop from the drop in pressure.
---

Class was all about cat stance and then moving people around you. The principle move was cross block, grab the wrist, lock the elbow with the other hand and keep the movement. If done correctly (maybe with a little jerk) the opponent goes flying with little or no work on your part. Mostly we were doing that and basic punch block. I’m a bit sore today, but doing very well after a very long night of sleep. If a tsunami came I’d never hear the alarm.

Knife Hand Strike

2011-04-13T12:45:00.001-08:00

Teacher pulled me aside after noting my less than stellar attention to detail during a knife hand attack. He held up his forearm and told me to attempt a strike with my shabby hand positioning (my fingers were spread, but my thumb was tucked). Of course the energy of the strike was satisfactory, but my fingers make a nice cracking noise as they whipped at the end. Owww. Error noted and corrected.

Class focused on two major areas – knife hand and round house kicks. Teacher is really just focusing on basics to get the new folks on board and bring everyone else up back to snuff after their month off (mine was three months). My general lack of fitness as it relates to class is making itself known right away. I take pride in my regularity at the gym and my basic level of fitness, but when it comes to our basic exercises I huff and puff like an old steam engine. I know this, but I still have to make a serious effort to ramp up my breathing depth before I even start feeling the first fingers of breathlessness tugging at me.

We started with knife hand technique and added in movement to figure out the hips and how to build everything together. Teacher stopped us and had a new guy, Storm, just do the hands and it pretty much blew us away. Storm has a blackbelt in TKD and something else. It’s apparent that whatever he studied the knife-hand was something he did very well. I swear that he looked like he was moving slow, but there was an audible swish crack with every movement. After his demo everyone was studiously trying to recreate his technique. I’m use we all looked like we were having a sissy slap fight in comparison.

After break we started work on roundhouse kicks. I looked at the high grip floor with some trepidation, fearing the rotation of the foot would be really tough. After a few practice attempts the floor didn’t appear to cause too much problem.

The exercise was block with with a knife hand and then follow with a roundhouse. Teacher purposely put us with folks our own height which is nice, but Dave and I are like two praying mantis getting tangled in our own limbs. Our normal compensation for the limb length and distance problem is to step out a bit during the block to set up for a great kick. This time Teacher stopped that by forcing us switch our weight and kick with the other foot – neat! Depending on what hand I blocked with this was either easy or hard. I quickly gave up on hanging onto to the offending arm for any kind of support.

I was tired and nervous about class for some reason, but it really turned out pretty great.

Creaky

2011-04-06T09:21:00.004-08:00

I'm not too stiff this morning and my back didn't seize up on me so I'm viewing my return to class as somewhat triumphant.

It's been 3 months or so since I've been to class in any formal fashion so last night was pretty important to me in a couple of ways. I wasn't sure how much I could do because I've developed an unwanted, but needed, hyper-vigilence when it comes to my back. Every little bend and twist has me wondering if I've gone to far and a question of will I paying for it later. I was also testing the waters about how much I wanted to be there. I sometimes struggle with the desire to be there versus the requirement to be there. I only want to go because I want to not because I think I have to. I was pretty stoked to be back and leading the warm ups was like getting back on my favorite bicycle, so I think that answered that.

The big surprise last night was the floor. During the month of time off (while Sensei was away) the owner of the space covered our worse for wear carpeted floor with an interlocking heavy rubber floor that doesn't go to the edges. We share space with an aerobics/kickboxing/Zumba school and we are only renters. The floor is nice but difficult to run bare feet across. The tend to stick so the normal feet always on the ground movements turn into a tripping, halting, squeaking ordeal. As Sensei pointed out - probably a realistic situation for us. You could definitely liken it to wearing tennis shoes on a non-stick floor. I led warm ups. As simple as that seemed I'd felt a little out of sorts with what I couldn't do. All the extreme stretches are gone and now filled with gentle, back friendly positions. Even though I know in my mind I'm really helping myself out I can't but feel a bit cheated because we don't have the really hard stuff to endure. What's become of me? I want the bitter now?!

Class consisted of the basics and I was warn out almost immediately. The combination of the time of the class and the length of the class rocked me. I'd been going to bed for the last three months roughly the time class was starting. And when I work out independently I rarely go beyond 50 minutes. I obviously have some catching up to do.

Come Back Kid

2011-03-08T10:34:00.001-09:00

Since Teacher is on vacation I been devoting my time to sorting out what I can and can’t do physically. My last evaluation at physical therapy left me somewhat upset about those limitations.

Part of my responsibility in class has been leading the warm up and I’ve been doing what Teacher showed me years ago with only a few variations. After having the therapist tell I can no long bend at the waist and do other exotic stretches he showed me alternatives to pretty much everything I needed to do, but the question would be, how would Teacher take a possible change like this?

Since he’s out of town for the next month I was doing a lot of role-playing in my head about how to approach him. Thankfully Beard invited me over to his new in home studio so we could practice katas and I discussed my conundrum to him. Although he didn’t give me a definitive answer I got the feeling that he supports the change given that he’s about 6 years older than me and appreciates the less the extreme warm up I used to do.

---

This morning Teacher called me from vacation (half way around the world) and he asked about my back and how things were going and I gave him the thumbnail run down of what the latest progress was. I finally stumbled into my conundrum about the warm ups and he didn’t have a care in the world. He was totally okay with changing things up! Woot!

Now I just have to wait to April to figure out how to tie it all together.

Back Eval 2

2011-03-02T20:20:00.001-09:00

I went to the Doc today and have been officially graduated from my phase of traction, but had a rather frank conversation about what I can and can’t do.

Principally I’ve got to watch my back like a hawk (keeping it straight and strong all the time) and completely adjust my stretching. I went over everything I’ve done for years and he pretty much disallowed every stretch I’ve done. He was trying to tell me all this info and my mind was going to the start of class and how I really couldn’t do any of the stuff I normally did.

I’ve got to talk to Teacher and see if I can recreate the warm up when I start the classes. Talk about monumental. I’m not sure he’ll bite, but if I can’t change that I’ll have to warm up outside of class or something. Crap!

Update

2011-02-15T15:51:00.001-09:00

I went to my evaluation session with the PT and felt pretty good before he had me run through things. Alas, I still experience pain at the last one percent of my range and that was enough for him to say that there will be no beatings until that is gone.

So traction weight has increased and the exercise to facilitate ease of movement has become more aggressive. Maybe another month? If so, it will fall in line with his original prognostication.

In the mean time I’m finding it easy to avoid class and hang out with my wife, but I’ve been mostly working. I will say that practice in the mornings feels entirely comfortable except that I can’t do any of the yoga I normally enjoy.

During the evaluation we covered exercises I can and can’t do at the gym which was both nice and frustrating. Weight lifting is such a horrible place to keep a rigid posture. There is so much lifting at a horrible level that I’m constantly gritting my teeth when I notice I’m doing it wrong. Everything good for you has the potential to be bad for you. And everything that tastes good has the potential to be bad for you.

The best part of the recovery is that I’m taking a huge pleasure in being able to sit on the toilet and just plain bending down to pick something up without screeching in pain.

Back And Forwards

2011-02-02T13:33:00.001-09:00

After having a long talk with Sensei during the last weekend I figured I’d better visit class just to say hi to gang at the very least, but as the time got closer I just started feeling worse and worse.

I’ve been going to physical therapy for a little over two weeks and sat down with the doctor to discuss what I was able or capable of doing since we were seeing some nice progress.

You could almost hear the sad trombone.

He said it would be two months before pain would be gone (depending) and a full 8 months before the damage healed completely. During that time I have to make sure I pay huge attention to my spine, it’s curve and any activity that would impact those things.

So that left me with a lot of questions about what I can and can’t do, but deep down it meant that I’m not going to be doing any kicking or bending for a long time.

With all that in mind I went to class and figured I’d be incredibly bitter and depressed and sure enough I was. Class had already begun and everyone was asking how come I couldn’t play. I had a few folks come and talk to me and got a lot of comments about my long face (and I wasn’t even hamming it up! I was surprised that I looked that way to them).

Teacher looked like hell. Red rimmed eyes, slightly swollen jaw, not able to hear, etc. He told me that he had an 104 temperature earlier in the day. He hacked his way through the start up and I thought he was going to keel over a couple of times, but when the gang started pairing off he said, “why don’t you walk around and correct folks?” Music to my ears! I was a bit tentative, but walked around and went to work.

I had only intended to stay for a little bit and ended staying the whole two hours. I walked out floating on a cloud. I can participate! Man did that feel good. Of course a new guy didn’t get the fact that I can’t play and still wanted to take me down at the hips. Just that little jostle sent a zip up and down my back. Must be careful!

Out of Action

2011-01-31T16:33:00.001-09:00

I haven’t posted for awhile due to my busy schedule, but mostly because I haven’t been able to do anything since I’ve been back from the Big City. While I was there my Doctor swung through and while we were hanging out I showed him some problems I’d been experiencing. Primarily my right leg seemed to be week in a couple of spots. I was unable to do a calf raise on my right leg and this caused him some concern which, in turn, caused me some concern.

I got back into town last week and the doc did a repeat of the evaluation and I hadn’t gotten worse, but neither was I better. His first thought was to get me to a MRI a.s.a.p, but with a few exercises I noticed a small amount of progress. So we are hold for the MRI, but Beatings has been put on the side line until I can do more physically. This is especially frustrating as I’d hoped to go to class and do a modified workout, but the doctor wants to hold off. I was wondering what I can accomplish, but I’m afraid to go backwards. So I think I’ll watch class and see how everyone is doing and eat bitter.

Diagnosis – injured disk. Pressure on sciatic nerve lead to calve and foot weakness; pain in areas of range of mobility.

Treatment – traction and specific exercise to increase fluidity of nerve channel around hip joint.

Prognosis – ? I guess we wait and see. In the mean I’m a half a man (I can kick on one side with no problem, but barely on the other).

Aikido 5

2011-01-22T14:57:00.002-09:00

My last night. I was extremely tired and really was thinking about going to bed early, but I needed to get motivated and get to the dojo if for no other reason than to pay for my classes.

In that vein I called Greyhound to see if he was going to the Gojo Ryu class just see if he could motivate me to go to two different classes in one night. He had a presentation so I was right out.

I drug myself out and got there early to watch the kids class which is an entertainment in itself. There was youngster who insisted that she was not sucking her thumb all the while plopping her thumb in her mouth whenever sensei turned his head. He knew it was going on making the few onlookers teeter with stifled giggling.

Sensei seemed to be speaking louder so I had an easier time understanding what was being said and it also meant that I didn’t have to lean over, struggling to understand what he was saying. I was under the impression that leaning over the kneeling line was frowned upon, but I couldn't hear anything if I didn't. Sensei is a very quiet spoken, 6th degree black belt who imparts lessons concisely. As one of the Nidans told me, “his gift is that he knows what to tell you and when to do it.” I was the recipient of this over and over. Just a simple correction of the placement of the arm or correction of center and I was instantly better.

That evening’s class placed an emphasis on taking Uke’s balance via a very minute correction from myself (as the Nage). I really had a hard time believing it, but it was immediately shown to me that it was valid. I was partnered with a 5 foot, 60 year old woman (in Hakima’s – I should have known) whom which I had both hands around her forearm. Through settled her stance and moving a finger she had me moving into a throw position. I think she was literally only half my weight. Unfortunately, I left bruises on her arm. That made me feel uncomfortable.

I mentioned before that the degree of theatricality that seems to accompany Uke’s intended fall makes me feel uncomfortable. I’m not totally over it even on a good day, but getting thrown by a little old lady certainly did lend credence that there discomfort in some positions. If I'm going all in on a hold I'm going to pay a price.

I partnered with a rather bulky guy and my height seemed to put him into a relatively difficult position to which he’d have to dance to get around me. When he’d grunt or make some other noise I’d immediately back off and give him space which would disrupt the exercise and really throw things off. He said, “dude, if it’s really hurting me I’ll roll out – just go through the whole move.” I’ll try. I’ll try.

Finally I get partnered with a guy that’s fully 6’ 5” and about 300 pounds. He was by far the most dramatic of the bunch, but at least he would talk a bit. In retrospect I think that’s what I found so frustrating. The absolute minimum of chatter at all times. I realize that is what is expected, but I’m really from a different mid set.

After class I asked the folks if they socialized together (since I felt rather ostracized) and they reported that some did and some didn’t. It depended on age or if they had family. No clear group whereas my class makes pains to be inclusive at the very least during the class.

In the end I realized that the sense of community was very important to me, but the quality of the teaching was excellent. It was definitely better to come the class with no prior knowledge as I keep dissecting instead of absorbing. Probably a better person would have a better experience. I’d go back though just because there seemed to be something more to learn right around the corner.

Aikido 4

2011-01-18T22:44:00.004-09:00

After Gojo Ryu I wasn't sure how Aikido was going to feel. Sure enough the first 15 minutes felt alien and I kept losing focus, but we started the examples I felt more engaged. Of course I couldn't stop thinking about how much all the arts borrow from something else and try to refine it to a philosophy.

The Sensei at the school is very good and really focuses on centering on the Uke. This a concept that my school occasionally touches upon, but never in such concise fashion. It's the same with taking balance. They don't say that specifically (at least not to me), but everything in the class is predicated on some aspect of that. I did find myself taking umbrage with a lot of the moves that require the Uke to give themselves so fully to Nage. I know it's for building and such, but to have such drama put into it makes me want to puke. I'm like, "just stand up for god's sake and stop groaning and squirming." Totally not fair to the circumstances, but it was my mindset.

Strangely after all this I just wanted to do some Chi Sao from Wing Chun, but sadly I was never that advanced to do it and my only solace is videos on youtuber.

Gojo Ryu 1

2011-01-18T11:18:00.004-09:00

This is week two in the big city and my enthusiasm for Aikido got a short side-step when they cancelled classes for Martin Luther King day. So my friend of many years (who I think participated in my brown belt test) talked me into trying out a free Gojo Ryu class instead.

We showed up early and got to meet our instructor. My buddy showed his normal annoying trait of not asking the correct questions. For instance, "Can we participate in class tonight?" turned into "Hi, I was wondering about Gojo Ryu and stuff." Urgh.

The class was lead in a very traditional Japanese style, but the floor was hardwood and seiza was brutal. Everything about the dojo screamed Okinawa and had all their pedigree out for everyone to see. The backwall was covered with makiwari and forearm weights. The other walls had tons of black and white photos of instructors in Okinawa doing all sorts of exercises with arcane gear.

Me and Greyhound shared the class with four kids and one teenager and got a quick introduction into the class. We got to shout "Oos" a lot and learned a huge amount of Japanese (about 10 words). Mostly stances, strikes and direction. Certainly more than what my class has.

As we went through the stances I got a huge flashback from two aspects of my martial arts history. The first was more recent. Teacher Slim used to have us do Sanchin, which to me was a very specific routine of foot works and strikes. Sure enough Gojo Ryu is all about sanchin! I couldn't help but inwardly giggle as one of the blackbelts corrected my stance.

After doing that we had to learn all the basic stances which really blew my mind. I took Wing Chun in 1981 or 2 and remember a lot of the basic stuffs and here I was a million years later doing the back foot stances and settling into the shallow-chested, rolled back stance from back in the day. Toes in, toes out and then toes back in and knees slightly in. Man, I was tripping hardcore in a martial arts class.

One stance I had never before was "shige" I think. A deep horse stance with the toes pointed out. I was concerned about my knees as always, but this stance was incredibly comfortable to me. What a nice surprise when so much of the stuff we normally do kills me.

When we practiced the strikes I was caught off guard about how little emphasis was put onto form. Our home class is about doing stuff so correctly to avoid bad habits, but I was in a class with kids so maybe that had something to do with it.

All in all a really fun class. A great change, but it told me how much I miss Wing Chun and how much we all study really goes back to China. Weird. I think this means that I've studying long enough now that everything can be seen to have connections. Wild

Aikido 3

2011-01-14T08:45:00.003-09:00

Tonight I thought things were starting to come together because were worked on many similar techniques, but stuff where I take some pride really suffered. Specifically my rolls. I'd like to think I'm one of the better rollers in my class, but in Aikido I'm like a drunken elephant. Most of the time I go into the roll to fast and get a resulting boom whereas the seasoned practitioners enter and exit the rolls with nary a sound and always appear to be soft and comfortable.

Something that came up several times was when I was the Nage I would regularly forget to step out of line when the Uke attacked. This led to a lot of bad technique setup. Ironically I would say this was a problem I had at my TSD classes. So it was nice to have that corrected and I hope that it pays off in TSD.

The second portion of that problem was that I needed to be facing Uke with hips parallel, or being centered correctly, as they say it. I tend to enter the technique correctly but then get far beyond instead of blending. A fascinating concept for me since it's not something we do in TSD.

My third significant problem was my tendency to lean. This is something that comes up from time to time in TSD because it throws my balance forward and makes it easy to take advantage of me. No different here. Thankfully everyone is totally cool with pointing it out and I think it made it easier to not do it or, at least, reduce the incidence. I just really have to focus on my "carriage and posture."

A final note for this week. I was going into the class with a bit of a frown because I was expecting a larger experience earlier in the week, but exhaustion and the job were making it tough to enjoy afterwork activity. However, when I walked out I felt reinvigorated about attending and going back again next week. Clearly it's having an impact on things I know I need to correct and I'm getting to learn all kinds of new things.

Aikido 2

2011-01-14T08:44:00.001-09:00

I wasn't sure how much I was going to enjoy the class since it was only an hour long, but the structure of the class is that you are to be ready to go when the clocks strikes 8. The Sensei gave us about 5 or so minutes to warm up, but it was enough as he structured the class around non-intense movement in the beginning to get the blood flowing.

After each movement we would sit while he demoed the next part. In this class the exercise was always following by the same thing except performed on the knees. Walking on the knees is call shikko (which I immediately dubbed "sicko), but I think everything combat related on the knees is called suwari (not sure I heard that correctly). By the half hour mark was groaning from the activity. Worried that my tender knees would really be acting up I would occasionally stop to stretch them behind me. It really didn't work, but my partners never indicated that it was a problem.

One of my favorites was an updown. When the person comes in for a double handed grab to the gi (to the shoulders for instance) the nage steps to side, one hand pushes an elbow and the other hand pushes the other elbow down. The Uke bends over and, boom, the Uke gives a slight shove forward and the Uke rolls out. We can definitely use this in TSD. Even though it's predicated on a grab, the grab didn't actually need to occur. Sweet.

At one point we were doing a shihonage. This is a wrist twist that we use in my class so I was somewhat comfortable and didn't think much about that portion since i was trying to learn the footwork and everything else. My partner for the exercise thunked down and said, "apparently you go to a different syle school" with a big smile on his face. I'm not sure what I did differently, but I'm betting he wasn't used to his partner putting that much energy in the wrist lock. This class doesn't put an emphais on that - as far as I could tell.

This class was a great deal more populated. I think around 12 folks all together.

This class was also very quiet. Questions aren't forbidden, but it's either frowned on or something along those lines. I will say that questions weren't really required becuase the instructor was impressive in being everywhere at once and correcting what needed to be worked on. It was still a tough change from our class where it's questions and answers all the time.

Aikido 1

2011-01-14T07:48:00.003-09:00

I got into the big city Sunday afternoon and checked in at my hotel after doing the rental car hustle. If you get one off airport property it's half price. But you have to be there by 6pm and, of course, my flight landed at 6! I was able to make it and the hotel turned to be really nice.

So I finished work and ate a hurried dinner and went early to the dojo. Since I've been there before ( 2 years ago)I could join class directly, but they are very traditional and I struggle with the Japanese and timing of the beginning of the class.

However, they all seem fine with my lack of ability and mumbled Japanese (domo origto oh my god mmymmmbbyby).

I wanted to keep my mind on anything that could be used in our class (moves that are not predicated on the Uke grabbing and holding the Nage). The nice thing is that everything in class has a proper name, but I have no paper to write down what the Teacher is saying.

Two hours was a bit tough with a poor night of sleep behind me, but it was a lot of fun. The best part being that their were only two instructors and me. About a half hour in, another fellow joined, but I was loving the attention. One of the blackbelts seemed to be struggling with things, but I think it was his knees. Hard to tell with everyone focusing on their own bodies instead of the guys attacking.

Post Vacay

2011-01-06T13:53:00.001-09:00

I went on vacation to the mid-west for two weeks with the wife. However just before I left my hip starting acting up. The pain never cleared and I finally went and saw the doctor a few days ago. Apparently I’ve got a pinched or enflamed sciatic nerve that makes it very difficult to bend over. I’ve got to go to PT for a bit and stop stretching. Apparently that was making it worse.

Work has decided to send me over the big city for some extra work and training. While I’m there I can attend the Aikido School for two weeks fairly regularly. Can’t wait. I had visited a few years ago for two days and loved every bit of it. This time I’ll remember to wear my white belt and try not to look like a dork trying to remember the ceremonial steps.

Black Stripe Test 1b

2010-12-17T09:34:00.001-09:00

After getting my notes on Tuesday night I was really struck with a case of the nerves for the Thursday observation. I went to class early as usual and started vacuuming after I changed. I thought I might as well take advantage of the OCD and anxiety and put it to good use. Teacher could tell I was ramping up and pulled me aside to do some very light sparring. After about two minutes he said, “now do it with breathing.” Ha ha.

He told me before class that I could continue teaching the kids class until I improved. Since I was fairly anxious I immediately starting reading into that. I figured that meant I wasn’t going to get the belt tonight because I had to grow so much more.

The class went smoothly and in retrospect I’d say that I tried very hard to put the notes Teacher gave me into action. Afterword he gave me some more notes, but it started with the fact that I had, in deed, improved vastly. He added that I needed to refine a few areas and, frankly, I knew when I blew it most of the time. Thankfully the kids didn’t seem to mind or notice when I’d flub something. Teacher, I think, I was mostly focused on my ability to control the class and still move forward.
---
I’ve been fighting some intense pain in my right hip as a result of some bad falls on Tuesday which were exacerbated with our kneeling to standing kick exercises. Ironically a low stance eases the pressure on my hip, but ibuprofen is really the best prevention and treatment. Of course I forgot to take that before class in my fit of anxiousness.

Of course we do those very same kicks last night and I was accompanied in my discomfort by others who weren’t quite healed up as well.

We did some “return to basics” type exercises that really worked on using the hips to initiate turns and then went on to two-step sparring. At the end of class one of the new students was tested for his first green stripe and frankly looked better than most of us when we did ours.

At the bow-out Teacher says, “Congrats to new guy on his green tip and everyone give Tater a round of applause on his first black tip.”

Wait, what?

I blushed furiously and then everyone clapped. Which was immediately followed by comments like, “Did I miss something?” and “hunh?”

After class bowed out I had to explain to folks about the observations and teaching the kids class were the requirement.

I practically skipped out. I got home, swept my wife off her feet, drank two glasses of wine and promptly went to bed and snored loudly. As befits the man on his way to the 1 in a 1000.

Black Stripe Test 1a

2010-12-15T09:55:00.000-09:00

As part of my testing criteria for this stripe I’m required to teach two kids classes while being observed by two black belts.

After the class completed Teacher pulled me aside to give me some notes.

“Tater” he said. “If you get into a fight with five guys and you focus on only one guy, what’s going to happen?”

“I get my ass kicked by the other four guys.” I replied.

“Well, that’s what happened in class tonight,” he finished wryly.

Apparently my OCD nature got the best of me because I spent half the class fixating on the one new kid who couldn’t do anything while the rest of the class started to wonder away from their lines or lose their attention in some other fashion.

I was kind of feeling good about the class, but after he pointed that out I started to realize that I had let a lot of stuff go poorly because I’d focus on something either too long or try a concept that was too involved for their ages.

Later Teacher gave me so more notes which I think will be the hardest of all to sort out.

- Talk to the children as adults – not down to them
- You are not in a democracy – you control the class
- Off task behavior needs to be addressed immediately

and so on.

Needless to say I’m going to simplify my content on Thursday and try to keep things as professional as possible. Teacher said that he’ll make me teach the class until I get it right. Ugh.

Grumpy Knees

2010-12-10T10:12:00.001-09:00

I was having this internal conversation with myself yesterday.

“I completely exhausted from work and poor sleep for the past couple of nights. I’ve got a second job that’s sucking the life out of me. I should probably skip beatings tonight.”

“The whole point of beatings is that it’s something you do no matter how you’re feeling or what state you’re in. So you should go – it’s not just for your physical fitness.”

“I know I’m in a foul mood though. It makes for a tough night.”

“Right. Whatever. You’re sounding pretty whiney now. You’ve got to go early and work with the kids to show proper spirit and also get ready for next week’s observations.”

So I went. I’m my own worst and best litigator.
---
As usual the kids class blasted by at high speed. I only started the class off and Teacher didn’t have any notes after words so that was nice. The rest of the time I walked around doing corrections and holding a pad for the kids to kick. Another Blackbelt was helping out since his little girl is in the class. I’d love to see him in the adult class, but his schedule won’t permit it.

Teacher started the adult class at level 11. To improve our legs and kicking he had us do lunge kicks. We haven’t done these in over five years. Basically you’re in seiza (a side note – when I looked up the spelling, one of the suggestions was seizure!), you come up on one leg and then go into a front snap kick. I wasn’t even sure my knees could handle that, but there was no particular evidence showing itself that I couldn’t so I soldiered on. We commenced doing this up and down the floor and no amount of breathing would alleviate the fact that I felt like I was walking up Kilimanjaro.

I was doing the hands on knees pose after that and realized my gluteal muscles were locking up. Apparently sitting all day at a desk job does exactly nothing for you in terms of fitness.

To add insult to injury, the bulk of the rest of the night was balance exercises. The bulk of that was being able to maintain balance on one leg, crouch down low, and defend against attacks. About 10 minutes I was unable to crouch at all and my ankles could barely support my weight.

The final blow was the attack line. The class was split into two groups. One person, in the one leg position, is attacked and has to remain in that position while either passing the attacker or locking them. I was the first to defend. Since I was totally shaking with fatigue even the smallest bump would knock me over. After five folks attacking I rotated out and became and attacker.

Teacher started that rotation and, of course, made it painful. He blocked my kick hooked it and moved it up pass my ability to stretch. I couldn’t swivel my hips properly and end up having to take a back fall. It’s not that I can’t take the back fall, but the pain created in making me do it is almost unendurable. After I got up I had to limp for a few minutes before I could put weight on my leg. In another rotation Beard chopped me on the neck (he loves to do this) while he had my leg. Yet another time he locked my elbow out painfully and I had to take a front fall to escape the lock. Teacher makes the comment to me, “well, it was your fault.” I had to hide a look of surprise. At this point I’m the only person taking falls during a simple exercise. Conclusion = schlemiel. The perpetual bungler. Most certainly something I don’t want to be. Of course gritting my teeth in pain management and frustration really makes for a smooth flow (read ironically).

I got home completely warn out with not a lot of humor and feeling very frustrated about class. My wife is not sympathetic to this sort of thing, but I vented for a few minutes even while I realized that my exhaustion was exacerbating the situation. Thankfully, she just echoed a bit of my comments to make me feel heard and I was better. We watched a bit of comedy on TV and that helped as well.

Now that I’m typing this out the next day I can feel a lot of that frustration surging to the surface. I keep telling myself that I’m not going to be taken advantage of by Beard, but that’s extremely difficult when you have to give yourself to a person during exercises. A constant vigilance is required I suppose. And I guess I need to make sure I take a quick retaliation to let him know that’s unacceptable. I give him way too much lee-way because he’s a black belt in Judo. He’s still a green and my junior in TSD, but it’s counter my personality to be a dick in any case.

Sooo tired.

More Bruises

2010-12-08T12:38:00.001-09:00

I showed up early for the kids class again based on a hint from Teacher. My observations got moved back to next week so he wants me to keep up with the kids so they can continue to keep comfortable with me as well as me being comfortable with them.

I wouldn’t say that I was doing very well with them, but neither was it horrible. I’m still using words that are too big and trying to describe concepts that are too much for most of them. Teacher also pointed out that I might be using a bit too much humor. It gives the really frisky kids permission to do the same.
---
Adult class was packed. 17 people! I wasn’t quite awake and feeling somewhat stressed about work and the kid’s class when Teacher announced that we’d be working on blocking kicks. If there’s anything that catches my attention it’s that. There is nothing in our compendium of exercises that causes so much soft tissue damage in a single event.

No one else seemed terribly concerned which I think is absurd, but it could because I don’t have any meat on my forearms where I need it for this type of work.

I got partnered with Dave for a low block/front snap kick combo. He let me kick first which I thought was nice, but I immediately developed swelling bruises over both sides of my ankles. After awhile I had to ask him to block farther up just so we could continue further. After we switched off it was my turned to block for which I totally had to get psyched up for. Of course within the first two kicks from Dave I could feel the bruises rising. So instead of the normally crappy, shallow breathing I do anyway, I was clamping my jaws shut trying to manage the pain.

After all the whole point here is to teach us that pain isn’t necessarily damage and we don’t have to retreat from it. Trying to get my brain around that fact is really tough though.

Man, did I sleep great. Total freaking exhaustion.

Subdural

2010-12-03T13:08:00.001-09:00

I remember this scene in the movie, Constantine, in which Keanu presses his forearms together and the audience gets to see a nifty tattoo of a star from two merged designs.

I have this now, but completely composed of bruises. Not like this hasn’t happened before, but I’m really having a hard time placing my forearms on anything. So typing is a challenge because I have to do it correctly – with no contact. At least I’m foiling carpal tunnel.

---

I went a little early again in hopes that my presence might be a motivating force to move my class teaching observations up in the priority list. Instead I got teach the kids round house kicks and run around with a focus mitt. Honestly it was a good warm up for me.

Teacher’s notes: “I think you’re still being a little too nice to them.”

During the adult class I covered the basic one-step sparring that is inherent in TSD and demoed the standard – left middle block, punch, punch, side kick. In my mind this is the easiest exercise ever, but as usual Teacher was correct, in that I had a lot of blank looks and struggling to keep up. Man, teaching is totally a patience exercise. Breaking things down is the real art.

One of the exercises we worked on was the double knife hand block. I was partnered with Dave and he wasn’t holding back on the striking portion. I couldn’t seem to get my act together and just like magic Teacher appears to point out what I already know. Thankfully he was pushing me to kick higher. I really enjoyed the look of surprise on Dave’s face as I kicked to his chin while close up.

---

Teacher called me today to confirm observation days! Next Thursday and the Tuesday after that. Moving on up!

Wishbone

2010-12-01T10:10:00.001-09:00

Life Lesson 42: Heavy squats at the gym and while fighting a cold is a really bad idea the day before class.

I went early for the kids class in hopes that I could warm up my legs a bit. Squats the day before had left me stiff and inflexible. Dealing with the sniffles on the side also made it hard to get my blood pressure up and going. The kids class went by quickly, but I never really warmed up. Teacher plainly has a good time teaching that class, but I was totally out of it.

The adult class went by quickly, but during the second hour we were knocking each other off our feet. The standard move being that we slide our leg in behind the Uke’s calf and simply straighten our leg. The Uke’s leg goes flying out.

As Uke with my neophyte partners I’d end up crashing to the floor to save ripping my groin muscles. More experienced partners would do the “pop” and then catch me to reduce the odds of doing a split.

Near the end of the night Teacher came around and started working on refining the move. In my case he pointed out that I needed to stop being shy and grab the face of my Uke to “steer” him. As usual he demoed on me, but for whatever reason my normal flexibility was gone and his steering left me in a position where I could neither fall to my back or grab him for support. A blinding flash of pain in my hips, coupled with an inadvertent yelp and I was able to get a knee under and fall down. I had to lay on the floor with the “stupid, oh my god I’m in pain, far away eyes” look for a good 30 seconds. My partner gratefully hauled me up, but I could barely stand.

I realized that if I kept moving a little bit my legs wouldn’t collapse, but in my head I was really kind of worried that I had done some kind of damage. My legs were literally shaking trying to hold me up. I couldn’t really do the move on my Uke and I definitely couldn’t do the move as the Uke. Teacher finally called the end of that exercise to which I was eternally grateful, but then he calls me over to demo the moves more fully to the class. “Oh s#!*” I thought to myself. “Can’t he see that I’m having troubles standing up?” I guess not.

So he expands on the two moves and then has me do a couple of attacks to the waist (wrestler grabs) so he can demonstrate what do with that. Thankfully I was mostly in a static position and not any splits.

End of night report – 10K mg of Ibuprofen and only a little stiff this morning.

The Shift

2010-11-24T13:09:00.001-09:00

I’m not sure when this occurred, but Teacher is giving me more and more responsibility in class and I’m not really sure I’m ready. For instance, last night we broke up in to two groups and he assigned me one group to work on really basic grab and throw. Since the group is made up of folks with varying skill levels and physical aptitudes, I was stuck in the predicament of explaining basic engagement with Uke and Tori. Even though we were doing monkey-in-the-middle type practice they plainly weren’t getting the idea that they needed to face the Tori one at a time. Instead I got a cluster*#!$ of people attacking from the rear to tapping Tori on the shoulder. Jeeze!

After we got that sorted out Teacher came over to my group to see how we’d faired. I was sort of nervous because I didn’t think we doing that well, but he seemed happy in that we were jerking each other off our feet with a minimum of effort – a good measure of success.

After break we worked on refining that grab and tossing people around. At the very end of class he demoed with me and as usual my shoulders and knees were telling a tale of woe when I got home. The joy!

Smooth Running

2010-11-18T21:48:00.003-09:00

I'm relaxing with a glass of Scotch after teaching both classes tonight. After a spending the day with increasing anxiety or wondering why I was more anxious I ended up going really early and vacuuming the place. I don't think I have OCD, but I do enjoy seeing a clean floor and it gave me something to do instead of fretting. Of course one of the students saw this and ran over to take over. So I sat around and watched the clock.

The twins that normally cause a ruckus didn't show up so the class was quiet and respectful and moved smoothly. I had prepared an outline for both classes, but for the kids class I stuck with easy things and only ventured into tough territory with a blocking combo. All in all a pretty fast and pleasant experience. I was only anguished by kids that couldn't keep up with certain things or were easily disoriented when we moved. Kata's proved to be most of their undoing, but I forged ahead thinking that this wasn't the time that I needed to focus on individuals.

Beard was nice enough to come to the kids class and participate with the students, occasionally straightening out a kid's form as needed. Before I knew it the class was done. I wished Teacher and Teacher Slim were there for this one. It would have been a nice start to my "testing" classes.
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The adult class had really given me some angst because I could remember years ago where, in my mind, I had epically failed at the whole experience. I was teaching technique way ahead of my skill level and rushing badly. This time I was relaxed and the pace was comfortable and I stuck with only things I felt comfortable with. So I ended up with about four that were easy to teach or, at least, were easy to introduce.

I think that mostly it was good, but I'll go over my notes with Teacher tomorrow and see what I could have polished. But, honestly, I feel really good about the whole thing.

Slipped Disk?

2010-11-17T08:23:00.001-09:00

I got up to use the bathroom around 1:30 am this morning and when I sat down on the bed I noticed a quickly growing pain in my back. Seconds later I could barely lay down. Being mostly asleep I figured laying down would be a good idea, but as soon as my back started to settle the pain became so intense I had tears running down my cheeks. Unable to find comfort in any position I went to the medicine chest and choked down 10K of ibuprofen and shuffled back to bed while literally gritting my teeth.

After an hour of moving very carefully back and forth in a variety of positions I found I was able to lay on my back once again and fell asleep. The only thing that was going through my mind was that I had to teach class on Thursday – this can’t be happening!

Some where in the back of my mind I realized this was different than other incidents. Normally, with a back spasm all the muscles lock up around the spinal column causing the most intense pain. However, even my pain and sleep induced haze I could feel my muscles all behaving normally but the pain in my back and radiating down my hamstrings was absolutely new.

This morning I’m kind of sore, but my flexibility is mostly in tact – what an intense relief!

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Last night I made it a point to show up for the entirety of both classes. This frustrates my wife a bit because it means I’m out of the house for more than three hours, but she’s trying to be a good joe about the whole thing since I’m working toward my next rank.

I forget how fast the kids class goes. I feel like I was just warming up when the class was done. I think all my nervousness is going to be reserved for the adult class which I feel totally unsuited for. I’m using the rule that I can only teach technique that I know really well, which when it comes down to it, doesn’t feel like a lot.

I went over the few things I was going to work on with the adults with Sensei and brought up a lot of notes. The biggest concern being the vast difference in skill levels. I want to do some mat work, specifically throws, but he pointed out so many of the students were new and knew nothing about even taking a basic roll. So that’s what I’ll be working for most the third hour. Fantasies of high flying are gone now. Wahhh.

Open Seasame

2010-11-12T12:52:00.001-09:00

I saw nothing but blue and a felt a quick flash of pain in my neck as I snapped to the side.

Beard was wearing his reversible competition Judo gi with the Blue side out when he came in last night. I normally get the flack for wearing non-standard gis (red, tye-dye, etc.), but his super high-end gi is an attention getter because it is so nice compared to our low-end purchases.

At the very end of class we had a new exercise to practice. The person to be executed against stood still and closed her/his eyes and waited for the signal. The person doing the attack got the choice of gun, knife or open hand. This proved to be an endless source of entertainment for the class as the defenders usually ended up eating it one way or the other.

My turn to defend was predictably a huge mess. Sensei said go and I had my eyes open for a fraction as I realized Beard was doing a flying knee and was literally a hair away from contact. Thankfully we all move much faster than we think we can and I dodged left as he shot by. I didn’t fully escape his head grab, thus the sharp neck crank.

My second “contestant” was Swimmer, who, as I may of mentioned in the past, has little to no ability to throttle her control. Sensei said open and I could see her hand flash around my side. My attempt at block and avoid were way to slow and I felt a nice slashing pain in the back. I kept the maneuver going and took her down and fell on top of her. Later, in the changing room, the guys pointed out that I had two perfect horizontal lines across my kidneys. Damn.
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This was my second night of partially leading the kids class. Teacher made a point of leaving the room for long periods of time so that the kids could get used to me and I could get used to not falling back on him. All things considered, my time with the kids went well, but I got really tired quickly of bad behavior. I also learned that “shushing” the class does exactly nothing.

Teacher is having me take both classes next Thursday. I don’t too feel too anxious right now, but knowing me I’ll be wound the whole day before.

After class he complimented me on the segments that took over and noted my relative comfort with kids. Could I be learning something?!

Preparatory

2010-11-10T11:15:00.001-09:00

Last night was my second evening working with the kids class and it went pretty well, but being entirely honest I was glad that it was broken into pieces and I didn’t have to construct the lessons. Teacher does all his lesson construction from the top of his head, picking from vast years of experience and applying whatever crops up in his mind to apply to whatever is going on.

That used to drive me crazy because I like knowing what is expected of me and what we as a class we’ll be working on, but I’ve come to appreciate the finesse he brings to bear with what he produces. With an ever changing cast of characters, progress that we experience as a group is always set back to basic as newer folks join our group. Teacher seamlessly brings beginner techniques in while getting advanced students to work on variations.

With the kids I’m not quite sure what you can teach or say just yet so my exposure to their very fast hour is really helpful. I tried explaining the outside crescent kick to them and got a lot of blank looks. I realized sometimes you just have to move on and hope that works.

The adult class was packed and we had three new people that have the look that they may stay around for a bit. We had 17 people and three were missing. The room feels particularly crowded and the heat level kept going up. If we keep this level up movement based work is going to be a challenge. We did a few katas/hyungs, so everyone’s stances got short in an effort not to trip over their neighbor.

And so it begins…

2010-11-05T10:36:00.001-08:00

To get ready for my upcoming “test” I went to class early to work with the kids. I wanted them to get used to me by having me around instead of treating me as the substitute teacher.

I wandered through the rows of students correcting hand positions and stances then Teacher had me lead kicks for awhile – giving me a moment of control over the class. I thought it was going to go well, until my first monkey wrench appeared with in five minutes.

We had just begun crescent kicks (inside) when a hand went up in the back. My first mistake – answering questions. I can’t repeat it verbatim but it was so left field I wasn’t sure what to do.

“Yes?” I said.
”I don’t want to be here.”
”What?”
”I don’t know this [sic]move.”

My confounded look and stuttering response was interrupted by Teacher who explained that we get to learn new stuff all the time.

I was really expecting interrupting and squirrely behavior, but that was novel.

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The adult class was kick intensive and sweat inducing, only made worse by my warm up. I have no idea why but I decided to make it a real stressor. Just a lot more volume, but pushed the push-ups to 11. Big Dave said, “you’re my hero” after we did finger pushups.

We did a lot of pad work to get some force into our front snap kick. This was followed by two punches. It was illuminating to see who could project that hip and create some power. I did see a lot of folks holding smashed and twisted toes. I realized that this was pretty important in that it forces folks to get the proper foot position or pay a price immediately.

We finished class up with Katas/Hyungs. We did the first 9 with many repeated for newer students. As we moved up the newer students would sit out and watch the rest of us. By the time we got to 9 (Bassei) it was just Teacher and I and I was breathing like I’d been sprinting for the last 15 minutes. No pretense of breathing normally. Just gasping.

After class I had teacher explain a triangle choke to Dave and I. Dastardly stuff. He took me down and used my body weight to put pressure on my neck. Horrible position.

Beard wanted to see me kick for some reason without touching my kicking foot to the ground. I gave him three successive side kicks – one at to the knee, one to the gut, and one to the chin. I actually touched him on the chin! I was impressed in spite of myself.

Tests and Nightmares

2010-11-04T14:35:00.001-08:00

First day back to class and all was well. Exhausting, but in a good way.

Teacher pulled me aside after class and told me what my next test was going to consist of – I have to teach two children’s classes in their entirety while he and Teacher Slim critique me.

I didn’t think that was too bad, but that night I had horrific nightmares about getting to tournaments in sports I really didn’t know much about and couldn’t get to the airport on time. A connection?

To prep for the kids classes I’m going to start going in early to participate in the class. I’m not even sure how this is going to go, but I’m not going to smile and I’m not going to joke around – two things that mess me up as a teacher.

I told Teacher that I hated him and he laughed. I told him that I’d rather run around in a circle for an hour instead. Ironically, in my head I didn’t think it was too bad. It should be challenging, but not deadly, but I thought I should play along in how horrible it was going to be.

Beatings Starting Up!

2010-11-02T07:56:00.001-08:00

After a month off of regular class we are going to reconvene tonight and see if I kept the rust off by working with Dave. I’m a bit sleep deprived today, but I’m hoping the anxiousness and excitement will wash that away when 7pm comes around.

Yoga and Beatings

2010-10-22T13:32:00.001-08:00

Moody dark lighting. Trance-based, Hindu-tinted, soft music. People in abstract poses.

I stared at Dave when the lights went down and wondered what the hell was going on. Apparently the room we use was being coopted by a yoga class that couldn’t care less that Dave and I were practicing throws and locks.

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We’d had the room to ourselves for almost the entire hour when a few folks started trickling in with mats and doing some basic yoga poses. I thought this was a nice change from the guys who were listening to Death Metal especially since the women coming in were very easy on the eyes.

By the time we started working on basic locks and then throws the lights went out unceremoniously. Followed by “ching-ching” of temple chimes. I was mostly focused on tell Dave about some esoteric component of the throws to realize that more people had come in and that a class was starting (how’s that for zanshin?).

Call me passive-aggressive, but they might have mentioned the class to us, but Dave and I decided to continue unabated so the sounds of the evening consisted of:

“Downward dog.”
”Plank pose.”
-Thump-
“Warrior pose.”
”Something pose.”
-Thump-
etc.

We kept that up for a good half hour before the constant standing up, even with Dave’s assistance, started playing havoc with my knees. Using his arm to get up was great because I never do it in real life, but it totally extended that part of the lesson for me. Unfortunately, we couldn’t pull out mats and work on his falls which I’m dearly excited to do – since it means I’ll get to throw someone. However, we’re running out of time since Teacher gets back in a week or so.

After we left to change out I noticed a flyer on the wall saying that yoga class was starting that night – whoops.

A Pilgrim’s Progress

2010-10-20T13:51:00.001-08:00

Bang!

Even as Dave’s strike left the side of my head I recognized the hammer fist by the way it covered my tiny, shell-like ear. Dave winced and immediately stopped; sputtering his apologies. I was just thankful that he hadn’t cupped his hand or I would have been deaf in that ear for a while.

After a few days off I was a bit rusty and having a hard time getting centered. I was pretty tired and emotionally at a low because our cat was diagnosed with kidney problems. However, after we started going I was able to pull together a nice progression from a base lesson.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m systematic and could be perceived as boring or repetitive, but I find solace in the known and it allows me to warm up carefully and reinforce the basics. During this time it’ll dawn upon me that there is something to work on and I’ll try to sort something out.

With that in mind I thought we’d work on shifts. The shift is a movement forward without taking a crossing step. The front foot stays in touch with the ground and glides out to where you’d normally step to and the rear foot immediately closes into a normal stance.

I had Dave do a block to the outside while shifting towards me (at a slight angle) then doing a jaw strike/push to turn me around. The progression went from the head control to a head lock/rear choke.

We found a boxing timer on the wall and set it up for 99 seconds and did some light sparring. Dave was definitely taking advantage of the fact that a forward attack is hard to get away from. That’s when I got bopped on the head. I was pretty creaky this morning.

Scheduled

2010-10-14T10:06:00.001-08:00

My schedule is a bit off because it’s October. There is something magical about this month that converts any kind of pattern into a mess. I think it’s because my birthday comes late in the month and the build up to the “special day” creates all kinds of stress.

Social obligations pour in as people leave town and side work suddenly picks up for some strange reason. I’m glad for the work, but the amount of time it leaves to work on beatings and fitness can dwindle quickly.

My dream schedule for this month was to do beatings with Dave three time a week and try to work out three times a week. I was able to accomplish that for one week. After it was broken up pretty quickly. This week was a great example – Beatings Sunday and Wednesday, workout on Monday – nothing until next Tuesday. Plus I’ll be fat from all the eating during the weekend.

Last night we did the standard warm up and ran through all the blocks and strikes. I introduced pivots into the strikes to get focus on the hips and their power. After that we used the bag to work on actual force. I forgot how much labor that is compared to striking at air. Thankfully my balance was mostly good, but the power felt like it was really lacking.

While we were practicing punching/blocking drills apparently someone walked by the door and gawked. Dave interpreted this as awesome. I only hoped we didn’t look like two guys over 40 with pot bellies trying not to punch each other in the nose. I’d rather it be perceived that we looked like dangerous, steely-eyed martial artists barely escaping being punched because of cat-like reflexes.

I put our sparring section into the middle of the work out so we could come down off the adrenaline a little sooner. We started easy, but as always, intensity ramps up quickly. Dave did a spinning back kick while I moved in – and I saw him control that kick fairly well, but the impact was on the nerve on the thigh – it caught me and just buckled my leg. Wow! Was that painful.

We finished off with the first three katas and I was pleased to note that Dave is keeping his shoulders straight and relaxed.

External Training Update

2010-10-11T11:16:00.001-08:00

I’ve got anywhere from a month to six weeks to prepare for my next test. I remember vividly being wildly out of breath through most of the test and just getting through by sheer will power.

To mitigate this feeling of oldness and general lack of fitness I’ve really tried to amp up my exercise regimen. I’ve been training with a new class member, who is my age, three times a week in two hours blocks and other days it’s off to the gym where I try to get in a decent work out with emphasis on aerobics rather than weights. I’m finding the fear of failure very motivational, but boy am I tired. I get the sneaking suspicion that I’m not getting enough rest, but days off allow huge amounts of anxiety to seep in and thus, throw fuel on my motivational fire.

So this morning I’m completely tired because I couldn’t turn off my brain last night and ended up having a lousy night’s sleep. Definitely not conducive to seizing the day.
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Work with Dave has been pretty great. I don’t feel like there is any stress around what we are teaching and he takes instruction extremely well. The exercise for me is mental in that I have to break things apart for easier consumption and his sticking points aren’t necessarily ones that I’ve experienced in my past.

Dave and I are continuing sparring regularly in hopes that we’ll learn to breath better and think a bit more before running in and exhausting ourselves. Two minutes is good so far. I’d like to see that at more towards three.
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Possible insight to test – An old student was in town and ran into Teacher somewhere and they talked about the test. It sounds like it’s going to be heavy on teaching. I’m intrigued.

Proper technique

2010-10-07T13:48:00.001-08:00

Every once in awhile Teacher will throw in a change to our warms-ups. A few months ago he added finger-tip pushups into the mix. I liked this change because it was interesting and I’d never done them before. I was pleased to find out that I could do five. Since then I’ve worked up to 10 or 11. I’m pretty sure I could do more, but the pain stops me. This led me to a very quick search on the internets about proper technique.

I’m not kidding when I say that there is nothing of value out there, but I was briefly entertained by Jack Lalane pumping out superman pushups while on his finger-tips. Badass!

I’m doing them straight fingered and experimented with bent fingers with not much change in capacity. Anyone out there with any feelings on the matter?

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Roughly two months to the test. Trying to develop that cardio, but not sure that’s what matters…

Sore Knees

2010-10-06T09:50:00.001-08:00

In the back of my head I was wondering how careful I needed to be to remain safe after a lot of intense one on one with consistent sparring. Our last session on Saturday left me with a slightly tweaked pinky toe, so I thought I was doing good.

Everything in moderation – even moderation. I’m not sure Ben Franklin said that but I love the sentiment.

With that in mind I figured I’d try to keep the current pace set on Saturday and just add some features that came up. One of those was teaching Dave to fall. Being taller in class comes with a frustrating component – I don’t get to throw very often because it’s hard to get low and the less experienced students are terrible with their break-falls. I also can’t remember who knows what in class, so some can do a fair fall and others are horrible. Since Dave seems so good at other things I presumed he’d be good at the falls. Our first night months ago led to a partly separated shoulder because he reached down instead of slapping. Now he’s tentative, but motivated to get over that.

After a nice warm up where I was surprised that he didn’t have experience in punching drills (where have I been?) we moved to punching and moving at the same time. Another area that was very tough on him. It gave a us a nice scale of measure for what to work on.

The next area of work was taking falls. Since he has a really bad knee and I’m always watching mine the normal set up to learning the back fall was a bit tough. We have the uke kind of do a one legged squat and then fall into the landing position. After they are comfortable with that we have them go higher and higher till they can do it standing.

We practiced that for some time and I tried to show him how to do a shoulder throw, but that was a bit beyond his skill. Never the less I felt pretty excited because if we can get him up to speed then I can work on throws!

We finished up the evening with sparring again. This time I wanted to make sure we kept breathing as the most important thing. We were able to last ninety seconds on first round and used a 1 minute timer on the second. Although shorter we weren’t even huffing.

Because he doesn’t have a lot of flexibility yet his kicks are low and that meant my knees kept “getting in the way.” At the time it just stung a little, but today to top edge of both of my knee caps are fairly bruised. Ouch. It makes bending down very unpleasant. Thankfully we’ll have Thursday off so I can have an extra day to heal.

One on One

2010-10-05T07:46:00.001-08:00

Teacher has taken the month off to travel to far off lands, so the class is left to its own devices in the mean time. So although there is no official class offered, me and a few of the over 40 club decided to get together whenever we can.

I’ve decided to call us that because we stick out so significantly. A bulk of the class is in their teenage years, followed by the three guys in their early 20s and then there are the four of us oldsters. Between us the litany of physical complaints would probably never stop if class wasn’t in the way.

It makes you wonder where the missing population segment is - Probably busy having families and other important stuff.

I asked Teacher a week or so before he left if it was okay to train/teach with Big Dave while he was gone and I got the nod. However, as soon as I got a yes Big Dave goes to Trucker and tells him we’ll be working out. Oof. Awkward. Not wanting to exclude someone I took his number and wondered how I was going to manage that.

Dave and I met on Saturday and went to his gym; literally the most modern and beautiful place I’d ever stepped into, and began warming up. We were sharing the massive “aerobics” room with a single guy when we got there who was fiddling with the stereo which led me to ask Dave what music he listened to. “80’s music.” replied. He never grew out of it like many of my generation. As if by magic the guy started playing death metal circa 2003. Ah well.

While we were going through basic kicks and punches and identifying weak spots in form and technique more young men came in to use the room. Occasionally I’d look through the mirror to see if any of them were going to give the old men any flak. I needn’t have worried because they were pulling up their shirts to check if their abdominal muscles were in the peak of bulginess. I kept asking myself, “was I like that at their age?” Probably. Now I’m afraid the combination of white flesh, hair and sagging mid-line will terrify my opponent.

They all left after twenty minutes of primping and squeezing so Dave and I got to spar. This was the breakdown:

- 30 seconds
- 45 seconds
- 90 seconds

By that last round we were both watching our breathing and made sure we weren’t flailing wildly. Dave would amazingly move to throw! I couldn’t believe it the first time, but we was totally okay with soaking up a few punches to get his hip in and do a beautiful throw. Hunh!

We shall see what tonight brings

Close And Personal

2010-09-29T16:05:00.001-08:00

Tang Soo Do has a fairly straight forward precept – move forward. Or, at the very least, Teacher pushes this as a basic building block to our one and two-step sparring. You’d think something that simple would be easy to absorb, but as with all simple ideas, instituting them becomes a challenge. For many of us in the class a natural response is to back away in the face of advance to create space naturally and temporally.

I’m far enough along that I can push beyond that natural response if I put my mind to it. So during sparring practice I like to focus on my weaknesses (and there are so many) and in the case of last night we’d practiced getting close so sparring gave me the opportunity to try it out with Beard.

We hadn’t actually sparred in ages. Maybe 3 months or more to the best of our group recollection. This was due to the fact the bulk of the class consists of new folks and when they get in the mix someone usually gets hurt.

Teacher asked who of us that would like to go first and I threw my hand up with most of the experienced folks. I got to start with Beard and fun began.

By and large I would have to say that from the first person view that I got popped in the head more often than not, but it was because I was deep into his territory in hopes of bringing the elbows into play; which I did. The conflict was close and if we did back out it was accompanied by kicks.

I was pretty tired when we sat down and didn’t think much of how good or bad we were until the next three pairs went to work. It was as if everyone of them was a new style. A majority of them looked so good and clean that I immediately felt embarrassed for Beard and me.

After class I complimented one of the Twins on how beautiful he looked against Tall J, our new Brown from another school. I said that I was appalled that Beard and I didn’t look anything like that and he said that we looked awesome. I wish we had film so I could see what happened. Frustrating to do analysis off adjectives.
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The other side of being up close and personal is that you get the inevitable whiff of body oder or an improperly washed gi. I was working with Big Ginger last night a few time and noticed to my disappointment that his clothes or hygiene wasn’t up to snuff. Bummer. Then while I was banging elbows with Beard I noticed that sour smell of a gi that might have missed a wash somewhere along the way. At least we weren’t rolling around on the mats. I’d hate to have a stinky gi rubbing my face into the mat.

Magic

2010-09-24T16:30:00.001-08:00

A few years after Teacher got his Blackbelt he said he the experience was very anti-climactic. “Where was the super powers? The magic bag of tricks?” I understand what he’s saying on a objective level, but on an emotional level I’d love to have the same thing. You get a belt and, poof, you walk through walls.

Last night was grueling for several different reasons but as we filed out Teacher pulled me aside and wanted me to do the unbendable arm. Mentally I was trying to get ready for failure and think of fuzzy baby bunnies at the same time. While futzing with that I realized that Dave was bearing down and I wasn’t using any muscle! I freaking did it!!! I hugged Teacher and felt a blast of yummy chemicals paint my brain. After five years and finally I got that damn thing. I only hope that I can do it again.

The reason class was so exhausting is that Teacher threw some Kounseling (K for Karate) at me the other day. Basically, I need to stop giving people accommodations. I need to give them situations where they can explore their limits and try to grow or push beyond. By giving so many adjustments no one has to try harder than they are offered.

With that in mind I had to keep biting my lip and stopping myself over and over during warm ups and basic exercises. I hadn’t realized I was so focused on making sure everyone could enjoy that I was potentially robbing them of ability to test their own limits.

So my normally semi-relaxed state during the warm-ups left me befuddling and I started second guessing everything I was doing. Which leads me to the next frustration. We’ve just had a bunch of folks start in the class with a wide variety of skill and knowledge. The best being Tall J, a second degree brown, and the worst, Big Ginger, a borderline obese teenager that may or may not be developmentally disabled.

In the past couple of years we’ve had several kids like that show up and eventually disappear for whatever reason. Since the Father has shown up a few times I don’t have a lot of faith that difficulty will drive Big Ginger and his brother away anytime soon. Big G is one of those folks that says non sequitors and spouts random giggling. Basically weird.

Never the less I went home with a spring in my step and barely slept form the excitement of the night.

The Semi-casual Aside

2010-09-22T15:15:00.001-08:00

The room was sweltering, which I didn’t think would possible in September, but the crowd of 13 bodies drove the humidity through the roof. None of this was helped by the new addition of finger pushups during the warm-up. Teacher is one of those guys who can get to two fingers (thumb and pointer) during push-ups and is encouraging us to strengthen our hands the same way. I was able to do five with all fingers which surprised the hell out of me. Nothing I’ve ever tried before. I felt bad for all the new kids in class.

For the first time in a long while, or as long as I can remember, we actually have more people new to class than old timers. Beard and I are the most senior, followed by the Twins and Robot who just started within the year, and the rest are all sorts of new within the last two months.

After warm-ups Teacher placed me with Tall J, who I presume is in high school and is very pleasant. We did one-step sparring and he obviously knew what he was doing so I finally asked and found out that he was Brown in Shito-Ryu Karate. Hah! It’s awesome to have folks in the know. Teacher was spoiling me instead of taking lumps with all the new folks.

Dave came in a bit late and joined me and Tall J and we noticed something sweet in Tall Js punches. Both Dave and I are taller than Tall J so his middle height punches come in at that range between a middle and lower block. It slides in 9/10ths of the time. Phenomenal! The fact that he used a casual speed at the start of the punch completely threw us off every time.

At the end of class Teacher pulled me aside. I should have known this was coming, but he wanted to find out what I was doing for Thanksgiving. Was he going to invite me for dinner or ask to get invited to my house? No, he was telling to get ready for a test. After he gets back from vacation it’s going to be go time.

I asked him if I needed to study something in particular. Other than doing everything with exceeding polish he said he was going to test my “control.” He didn’t want to give me anymore than that. I don’t even know why I asked. Anxiety powers activate!

Karate Kounseling

2010-09-15T13:34:00.001-08:00

After I earned my Brown Belt some time ago (7-08!) Teacher pulled aside from time to time to work on my progress towards my next rank or Blackbelt. I say next rank because I was unclear which route he was going to go with my next ranking. On all our other ranks we have to “stripes” between each main rank. So altogether there would be 10 gups – the 10th being the blackbelt. So based on that logic I’m technically I’m a 7th gup.

Our school’s ranking system is based on subjective measure so there’s no hours to watch and no skills to acquire to determine what I need to be working on to gain my next rank. However, Teacher makes it fairly clear that I need to work on two things before he’s ready to test again. Situational awareness and assertiveness.

One thing that agitates Teacher more than anything is someone walking around with their head down and absolutely unaware of the surroundings. I don’t I fit in this category in the extreme sense, but he has caught me texting and walking or just numb and not paying attention – I guess I do fall into that category…

The assertiveness was related to my role in class. Since the belt test he’s slowly allowed to take portions of the class and wants regular reports on interactions with older students as well as new. It’s obviously easier to work with the newer because of the lack of history, but the older ones seem to be coming around. I’m just working hard to concentrate on what I know and stop when I don’t.

He asked how that was affecting my life outside of class. I couldn’t put a finger on it, but I can’t help feel like I’m interacting with folks differently. I have to admit I dealt with some depression this summer and although there was many factors that came into play I wonder if my old roles in relationships were changing and it was causing me some distress.

Burghers of Calais

2010-09-13T15:33:00.001-08:00

When I used to live in Washington, D.C. a lifetime ago, I stood in an outdoor sculpture garden and stared at a work by Rodin, the Burghers of Calais. The work represents the way people might approach death – fear, resolve, etc. I realized on Friday night that I got a taste of that when I worked at Teacher’s women’s Self Defense course.

The class lasted three hours and moved from lecture to practice about every half hour. I was fairly interested with how it was going to be laid out because of Bob Patterson’s comments at Striking Thoughts (him doing a self-defense based course).

Since this was a single class no effort was taken to train from the base up. We were literally teaching the most minimal moves to excise one from a situation and then get running. Based on how hard some of these ladies were hitting and kicking they would definitely make an impact on anyone stupid enough to hassle them.

As the women and young ladies cycled through the various stations we had set up I got to see their faces in various states of concentration. Plainly some of them were using memories to get charged up to strike the various pads. That’s were I saw the Burghers of Calais. To some of the members issues were being worked out in front of me. I felt like a peeping tom. Being the quiet guy in the back afforded me some anonymity and by that very association I got to take some hard shots.

One of the easiest shots taught was the kick to the groin. I held a very heavy pad between my legs and they got to go to town. There was a few people actually lifted me off my feet. I’m pretty sure I pulled a muscle in my leg.

I was trying to emphasize that they needed to, at the very least, look at what they were striking at. So during one set of combinations (groin strike, elbow strike) a young lady missed the pad I was holding low and smashed a poorly formed ridge hand into my genitals. Luckily I was wearing a cup, but that didn’t stop the standard man-cringe and wince of pain on my face. Thankfully she didn’t follow that up with a elbow in the face.

Every time she cycled through the line on a new technique her face would flame scarlet before she would start.

A very interesting evening. Afterwards I wondered out loud to Teacher about using the class as an advertisement for our classes. He admitted that he wanted to do that a bit and actually had a few people ask him about it. I was thinking more of a flashy demo where he threw me around or had Little Sister take me down. He didn’t think it was appropriate and I guess I should be appreciative because I was able to wake up with only the most minimal muscle pains.

Bodies Flying

2010-09-10T11:35:00.001-08:00

The thing about Beard is that he contains this huge amount of knowledge encapsulated in a person with little or no patience to explain extremely complex concepts to people with only the slightest idea about he’s talking about.

We had another huge class and because Teacher Slim was there we broke out the mats for almost the whole two hours. Slim teaches in the most non-linear fashion so you do a couple of techniques and ask him what he thinks and he’ll teach a dizzying array of alternatives while leaving you gasping in shock and awe.

To wit –our base technique was to block a punch at the elbow and bring our up our other arm (into what could be shoulder/neck choke), but moving to take down. You can either use you thumb in the neck (preferred) or press the shoulder (tough). So I’m practicing with two of the new folks and Slim comes up and shows two variations – one with a throw that blew Dave and Swimmer’s minds. Clearly beyond what they knew they’d be in for. Slim, thankfully, didn’t demo on them.

Beard came in at half time and participated in the various groups on the mat. Eventually working with me and my two folks. Whereas I’d like to think I’m gentle and repetitive he makes this pin-point focus on a very esoteric issue. In truth it’s really important and I’ve love knowing it, but he’ll get caught in that stuff and the new folks stand around with a dumb look on their face.

He ended up getting a bit distracted by Teacher so I was able to work on basic falls with my guys. I don’t know how anybody teaches this stuff. I mean I know all the hints and basic exercises to get them ready for the falls, but as soon as we do one they revert to reaching for the ground or landing on an elbow. Clearly something that takes a lot of time to get used to. In this case it was killing me because I’d have to stop them from landing poorly putting a huge strain on my already sad back. No head injuries so I was feeling pretty good about it.

Beard’s final touch of frustration and genius was the knee and balance. After we take someone down we are supposed to kneel on their liver (assuming you throw them on that side). Depending on where you land the person you throw can shimmy out pretty easily if you’re not careful. Beard’s expertise in Judo allowed him to show us an escape – don’t try to move the guy with your hip upward, try to move the hip on the floor under. I liken it to holding a cat (when they don’t want to) and then can rotate in their own skin. It’s a beautiful move, but my back was clearly screeching from the work of it.

At the end of the night by back was sore, I had a charlie-horse on my right leg, my right knee was slight swollen (wtf? Where did that come from?) and gi burns on my neck from the collar and the throws.

Tonight will be an added bonus in helping Teacher with women’s self-defense class. Three hours of getting punched in the balls. Wonderful.

Heat

2010-09-08T09:19:00.001-08:00

We’ve been getting an influx of new folks for the past couple of weeks so the class hit maximum capacity at 12 last night. This means we actually have 3 lines for bow in and it also means a larger pool for rotations. Unfortunately, it means that during the rotations I’ll be placed with new folks. That means I’ll be doing simple stuff with a huge amount of repetition. It could be argued that this is fantastic for me in that it helps me to focus on cleaning up bad habits, furthering my teaching skills, and generally lowering my stance (so many short folks). The only thing I miss out on is the higher speed and advanced creativity that comes with working with a more advanced student. When I finally do get partnered with one of them I find my creativity at a low and just stick with the straight stuff.

Somewhere in the second hour someone noticed that the heat in the room had hit an unacceptable level. This is such a profound difference compared to our regular bland cool temperature that no one noticed it until we started grabbing each other during one of the exercises. Sweat slicked arms, hands and wrists make terrible surfaces in which to grab someone. This is amplified because several of our young guys have decided to cut the sleeves off their gi tops ala’ Cobra Kai from Karate Kid. The worst part is that a lot of grabs that I favor utilize the sleeve of the gi. Ah well, adaption.

Sensei pulled Little Sister out of class second half of the first hour and had me run through the kicks. I was inordinately pleased that he had me run the class without prep, but it wasn’t any real big deal. Everyone was patient and threw in a couple of suggestions that helped me and the new students through some of the more esoteric portions of the foot placement in the side kick.

I woke up fairly sore because of those low stances and all the kicks, but not so much that I had to run to the Ibuprofen. Weee!

Almighty Knee To The Balls

2010-09-01T11:26:00.001-08:00

I think most guys have felt it at least once in their lives and most women can sympathize, but an almighty shot to the pills is universally cringe-worthy no matter who you are.

I rarely wear a cup during class because of the profound discomfort, but if I know we are going to be sparring I’ll force myself to “gird up my loins” in preparation. Ironically, the incident of groin shots is absolutely minimal during sparring. I presume this is because everyone is working very hard on controlling themselves.

Last night was filled with a lot of frustration and silliness. Teacher separated the class and gave half to me to work on an “out of time” move. In standard hard style feet movement is characterized by making half circles while moving forward. This allows the feet to remain in constant contact with the ground and allows for a nice trip setup if that’s your thing.

I ended up teaching my group absolutely backward even though they understood everything correctly. The Uke is supposed to attack when the student is at the point when both feet are together. This teaches the student to maintain balance all the way through movement and deal with the fact that reality rarely waits for a user to step then punch.

While we are undoing my mistaken approach to teaching this concept Tall New Guy (Dave) comes in and joins right away. He’s not warmed up and he knows it so we start easy, but to my chagrin one of his first shots while his feet are together is a knee to my groin.

After a nice little explosion of pain to my nethers I let someone else take that role while I spent a lot of energy not grabbing my crotch and rolling around on the floor.

We took our mid-class break and resumed this exercise and I partnered with Dave again. At the last few minutes of class he mis-judged his distance and punched me right in the throat. Groan. I mean urp!

I slept very well.

Aches And Pains

2010-08-27T12:26:00.001-08:00

Teacher called me up yesterday and asked if I could run the class from the “doing” standpoint. He lost a filling and apparently when right to infected. His jaw is swollen and misshapen and appears to be fairly miserable. However he still showed up at class and taught a fairly normal class. I only led a few things that required jostling so he could avoid moving his head.

A remarkably small crowd last night: The Wonder Twins, Swimmer, Me and the Tall new guy came in late.

Swimmer is a 16 year old girl who looks perpetually exhausted. She is a competitive athlete at our local high school that requires her to practice two times a day in two hour blocks. For whatever reason she’s pulled into our class and appears to enjoy it fully, but hasn’t really mastered controlling the strength she applies. I notice this is a common factor with a lot of female new comers. Weird.

During our four on one attacks (weee!) she would be set upon by all of us and would deliver the most brutal counters. Teacher would constantly try to slow her down, but even the slightest adrenaline would remove any governance in her strikes. My favorite – which I wish I had video of; it would have made a million hits on you tube – was her attempt to a ridge hand strike on one of the Wonder Twins. This was not foiled but briefly interrupted by the second Twins head. So she executes a shot to one brow and moves on to the others neck. All done so fast and furious that we presumed she broke her fingers in the process. Excitement!

I woke up today feeling like I had the precursor to the flu. All my joints seem sore and I feel achy across my back and shoulders. Great. Just in time for the weekend.

Drop The Hips

2010-08-25T15:05:00.001-08:00

After what seems like years we are finally having some semblance of Summer weather. This usually has a negative impact on class size because you literally don’t know when you’re going to get a chance to get outside. So the hardcore (read dumb) come to class no matter what. In our case Teacher, Trucker me, Beard and the new girl got started kind of late.

Near the end of warm-ups the Wonder Twins, Robot, and Tall New Guy showed up to fill out the class to it’s normal 8 folks.

Teacher kept things pretty basic because of the new gal and had us really focus on some very beginner items – most specifically the chamber (the fists ready position previous to a punch). After a lot of practice we did the first kata/hyung to check ourselves. Nice exercise.

Afterword we did the basic locks and grabs I partnered with Beard. Normally I’m a bit trepidatious of his heavy handed approach to locks, but we actually had a very informative session. His blackbelt in Judo turned out to a very good thing as supportive piece of knowledge.

When we do a few of the locks (especially as a lead into throws) I often run into the problem of getting someone moving if they have a solid stance. Struggling to take someone towards you doesn’t work out when you get all rigid. So Beard taught me a little trick of “dropping the hips.” I took this to mean that I needed to bend my knees quickly and fractionally and it worked like a charm. The balance was disturbed at a low level and I was able to move him.

I wish I had more of me to have the time to learn Judo. Sure looks fun.