New Pix and vacation

I've added a couple more photos on the slide show. Just Cook and Teacher doing some floor work.

I'm on vacation for the next couple of weeks. Sunny Mexico here I come.

Two weeks of healing!

Kick High

I leaned over and whispered into Arm's Of Steel's little sister's ear during sparring.

"Do I kick as well as Cook?"
"Well, you do kick high" she replied.

Ouch.

To include Little Sister in sparring we moved it to the first hour since she leaves at the break. For whatever reason this meant that we went into action with a diligence. I had to spar with Teacher and Cook in succession. Thankfully I was given a rest break between sessions. Wheezing and gasping let me know that we don't practice that nearly enough.

Since I'm no longer a newbie I don't normally get the "speech." Teacher usually says, "since your new to this you need to remember to control your strikes." Which instantly filled me with concern. My diet I'm sharing with my wife doesn't include a lot of carbs so I was feeling washed out as it is, and now someone I needed to move quick and wasn't feeling it.

So after four matches I was sat down and took a short inventory of myself. I was pretty pumped since I didn't get pummeled too much but had a nice golf ball growing out of my forearm. Ouch. What was strange was that we didn't do any wrist locks and both of wrists feel lightly sprained. Did I really block that hard?

Fallwell

And, no, I don't mean a certain clergyman.

Years ago I was watching "Kung Fu" with David Carradine and he was fighting a rather large fellow (possibly professor Tanaka) and he does, what my mind recalls, a tomoe nage (thanks for the proper spelling Silverstar). The professor doesn't get up and David says rather shyly, "he didn't fall well."

This has been a concern of mine for some time. We don't practice falls regularly, but when it's show time I'm expected to do it well due to my sempai status. Ironically, when it's done fast and well I'm at my best. When done slow and studious accidents always happen.

So it comes to tonight. We've got a couple of newbies and the mats come out during the second hour. So we start with wrist locks and some take downs - which is kind of nice now that I get to teach the new folks basics - off we go. I forgot how punishing it can be to teach the new person on wrist locks. I had to take a dose of ibuprofen to deal with the ouchies tonight.

We move on to hip throws (koshinage?) and even a couple of shoulder throws.
This video demonstrate what we aspire to. We aren't usually this fast or precise. Who knew the Poles has such whipass guys!


I think I have mentioned that I slightly taller than the rest of the group. I find throws to be very cool, but getting my hips under the short folks is murder. I'd rather pick them up and do it - which I find out later is somewhat acceptable if they aren't struggling. Talk about stealing their balance!

When I first started we had a guy who was enormous. Short story long - when we learned to throw the first night I was excited because this guy had hips as high as mine. For the life of me I couldn't throw him because I couldn't take his balance and he wasn't giving it up. However, he threw me a good 10 to 15 times. Remember I didn't know what I was doing. I got home that night and considered not coming back. I had never taken that amount of physical abuse in my life. Well here it is 4 or so years later and I easily took 20 throws and even gave a good 10 and I walked out of there with a smile on my face.

Back to the beginning. I don't know about the rest of you, but I fall really well to the right (a left hand slap to me). We just don't practice the other side a lot, so tonight Nilon threw me to the left and I ended up landing on my right hand and arm. Holy cow did that hurt. Mostly humiliation pain since Teacher was watching, but that was the other reason for the ibuprofen. I looked at the new guy and said, "that's why when you slap your arm needs to be out at a 45 degree angle." Very instructive.

Photos

I just added some photos from over the years in the sidebar. Watch the bad technique!