Joints-a-poppin’

Yet another night of being the prime demonstration fall guy.

Not too many people in class lately (during the summer we loose a lot of folks to work and travel) so it was nice to see four folks run in just as we finished the bow in.  Dorks.

Teacher seems to be ratcheting up the action more since the base level of our group is pretty high.  As a result, the new guy is struggling to keep up, but he’s game for all it and loves every bit of it.  In keeping with the theme, the post warm up punches, blocks, and strikes were twice as much and twice as long.

The practical part of class was with the mats, which I eyed with some trepidation.  After taking a thrown I get worried about the constant standing up.  Coming out of seiza isn’t too bad because I use my right leg first, but if we do throws that require me to bend or lean with the left leg first it usually starts squealing pretty bad.  No problems emerged as we started flying through the air.

Continuing with Tuesday’s theme of what do do with the person who tries to drag you to the ground we started with steering the shoulders, backing away, and shoving a person down all beautifully performed by me.  Alas, this meant that I had the wind knocked out of me a couple of times and generally had to take a beating to get the best views for the rest of the class.

By the end of class me and the new guy were wheezing horribly because ups and downs, but mostly due to the take down in which the shoulder or elbow are pressed down on the mat while the wrist is controlled caused the most anguish.