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.
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