Fight Night Recap

In an ironic follow up to last weeks post I blocked three whirling attacks, but neglected to keep up the pace for the next spinning backfist that ended up terminating on my brow.  Boooiiinggg. 

Class was relatively small with a new guy that comes from a Jujitsu school.  I’m not sure what his experience is, but he was pretty awesome with all the basics.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone move with their balance as well as him. 

In the second hour Teacher announced that we would spar since it’s been awhile.  This was met with a lot of excitement since we hadn’t done any since I was teaching the class in September.  Time flies and Teacher was most likely focusing on bringing the new students up to snuff. 

I got three fights which was pretty awesome.  My first was with the gal from the TKD background.  She was a bit intimidated due to the lack of pads and the requirement to check kicks and punches.  After we danced for a bit I started to get close and use my hands a lot which was not to her liking.  In an amusing turn she said, “get away from me!” and shoved me away followed by a brutal kick.  Hehe. 

The second fight was with Dave.  You never know what you’re going to get and this was no different.  He moved right through me which I was somewhat expecting, but he instantly got grabby and wanted to throw, but it was all sort of hasty and poorly executed.  Not to say that didn’t hurt when he contacted at a million miles an hour, but it’s safe to say that all I did was remain on the defense.  In our first exchange I got two knees to the groin and while I tried to back away he would attack further!  What a machine!  During one of those exchanges he got the spinning back fist in.  Ouch. 

The third fight was with our new guy.  I’ve never fought a Jiujitsu trained person and it was interesting to say the least.  I couldn’t close with him at all. And when we did it was on his dime.  I was able to stop his first takedown, but was never able to land a thing on him the whole time we ran around the room.  In the end he waited till I relaxed and took a leg into a throw.  Beautiful throw.  I hope he can teach us some of that stuff.   So fun.

The Place In Between

The struggle to push through the thin meniscus that separates the differences in consciousness is a mysterious purgatory in which I don’t have a lot of sensory input, but nor do I care about that loss either. 

During the push to wake myself up in the morning I may be at all sorts of levels of awareness, but not necessarily awake.    This state of apparent (or false) consciousness  is the closest thing I can equate to where I’m located when I receive a blow to front or back of my head. 

I would say, in a totally unscientific way, that it must be like a computer system coming on line.  Not every system is on at the same time – multiple services come on line in a consecutive fashion, often dictated by importance or the role of the system in it’s larger environment.  By extension the body possibly brings up functions in a similar fashion.  In my case vision and hearing come up last. 

I’m drawing these similarities because I notice that seasoned fighters (at least in MMA matches) appeared to have that knock on the head and still function.  It’s led me to spend some time thinking about the few minutes I’ve spent in that mode.   It must be that these fighters are so well trained that they continue to function without sight or sound.  At a preliminary glance that actually seems to be the case. 

Unfortunately for me, my training doesn’t embrace this at all (probably best considering it might come with a concussion) so my immediate response is to stand dumbly as my hands slowly lower.  I can’t help but wonder why I don’t fall down.  Is it innate balance?  I doubt it because I’m one the easiest guys to throw in class.  Or is it that the balance system is still on line when hearing and vision are no longer? 

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Class last week was filled with innovative throws and one that took me over the leg of Dave didn’t allow me to get a good slap in ended up ringing my bell a bit and took me back to the place in between.