Rust and Nails

After 6 weeks of no class (ha ha) last night was a welcome diversion from lazy evenings at home.  Not that I’m opposed to that, but the sofa and I have a long relationship and I need my space. 

During the time Teacher has been gone I’ve been diligent about working out regularly assuming that I’d been in reasonable shape for this week.  This assumption has proven to be incorrect more often than not and last night was no exception to that rule.  We were practicing simple punch and block with movement and after three or four runs up and down the hall I was getting more and more out of breath.  Due to the numbers I was able to step out of rotation and help correct form and stance in the others and catch my breath.  Teacher came up to me and I whispered in his ear, “man, we look really rusty!”  He laughed because it was true.  There was not even an ounce of smoothness in any of us.  Our class looked like absolute beginners. 

So we struggled through the basics for two hours.  Mostly bad balance and shaking legs betraying the fact that none of us had practiced this specifically. 

After working on basic movement for awhile Teacher asked who had the lowest stance.  I looked around and pointed out two students who looked pretty good.  He said nope.  It was the two guys that had already turned around and headed back in our direction.  I screamed, “cheaters!” 

To finish the class Teacher decided to do a little knife defense.  I assume this was to show off a bit to the new students.  He took a different approach and let us suffer a bit, by letting us try to recall our moves on our own.  I was really pleased to learn that I could recall the few very important lessons from just before break and thought I was pretty smooth considering the shakes.

Just before the end of class Teacher asked me to the front for demo time.  He then showed the class what their options were from the variety of attacks one could expect from a knife wielder.  I’ve never been in a knife fight and nor do I want to be so I’m sure hopeful that the stuff we are practicing has some semblance to what we could expect.  So while Teacher is throwing me around, locking me out, and otherwise abusing me in front of the class he told us the story of the police officer here in town that got stabbed 13 times.  The officer thought he got punched and almost bled out because the attacker didn’t slash – he just punched with the blade. 

While letting that soak in he demonstrated an arm capture with spinning back fist.  As he spun around his heel peeled up my big toe nail.  Not wanting to look any worse a weenie than I normally do I just pursed my lips and gritted my teeth for the rest of class.  Ouch.  Bloody toe again.