Right Hook to Plateau

I've made jokes to my friends about being beaten up by children and can usually back it up with some horrible injury, but last night was a classic.

As anticipated the first hour was attended by just Little Sister and myself. Teacher still looks like death warmed over (fighting a cold). We got a new gal, Angel, who is roughly my height and weight. She'll be a good addition if she stays.

So Little and I are paired to work on one-step exercises. These have been expanded somewhat by Teacher so we can work on combos. So I would do two punches and Little would respond with a combo of punches and kicks. Right away she rams her knee in my side which drops me quickly and then does a redneck punch to the jaw. All I heard was, "bing!" I blame her for the rest of the night's poor performance.

I couldn't do anything without using too much muscle and over-thinking everything. Definitely not an aha! kind of night until Beard showed up at the 2nd half. He asked if I wanted to work on anything in particular and I said kotegashi. Each time we work it I learn something new, but last night everything he said was valuable and made perfect sense. I realized that for the first time I was able to learn a huge amount - I might not be able to put it into play - but it all made sense. Unlike the once in awhile insights. Have I grown?