Class V2.2

Due to the incredibly inclement weather where I live I really assumed no one would show up for class.  My wife was curled up on the couch in a cocoon of blankets with our cats snuggled in close.  Thankfully, I had the keys to the dojang door and that forced me to push myself out the door and into the elements. 

To my surprise we ended up having eight folks show up.  Very nice since it was going to be fight night.  I wanted to be able to spread everyone out a bit.  With a smaller crowd I don’t think we’d be able to do very well in longer fights.  I see more incidence of injury the longer matches go on.  When we do informal sparring there are no stopping for points only calls from the director to move away from mirrors or when the action gets out of control.

I started the class with review of cat stance, cat stance with front snap kick, then with a review of double knife hand strikes.  We followed that up with a review of good things to remember while sparring.

- obscuring vision during a planned attack makes a nice setup for kicks
- Set up a tempo with the same attach over and over then change up for the third or fourth shot.  Works most of the time.
- Break tempo if one is occurring
- Keep moving  - side work is nice for linear folks

As promised I started the sparring before the hour break with the idea that we would be fresh and less prone to causing injury.  We got in about four, two minute matches and then went to break.  We resumed afterwards and in retrospect I’m not sure that we did much better.  I think I did really well, but the same lack of clear, clean moves was missing.  I’ll put up a couple of videos later this weekend.  I think, subjectively, that a match is really technically beautiful when one person is really good.  If not it can devolve into a sissy slap fight (with kicking!) pretty quickly. 

We ended up with a bloody nose, a bruised rib and dead leg/foot amongst us.  I’m the one with the foot.  I think I bruised a nerve or something.  I’ve got a noticeable lump on the side of my lower leg and my foot feels numb.  I’m unable to pick the foot up very far so that’ll bare watching.  Last night was weird when I tried to sleep.  I kept tossing and turning because I couldn’t feel the foot.  Weird.

The second hour concluded the sparring and we went to Kata to finish up the night.  Probably the best kata I’ve seen in ages.  As a group everyone was crisp and well balanced. 

I think I’ll follow the formula next week with mat work on Tuesday before beatings on Thursday.