The Ghost Man Commeth

Teacher asked me to take the kids class tonight and I thought it might be nice, but the timing was off.  Work has accelerated and I've got visiting specialists in town commanding a lot of my time.  It was actually a great time to get away from work out just to clear my mind.

I honestly wish I was a better writer just so I could relay the Heironymous Bosch-esque nature of the class. Teacher has a very serious clamp on behavior and totally okay with getting kids to do push ups and sit ups as punishments for speaking or acting out of turn.  What I mean to say is that I don't think I'm up to his approach and it showed.

I'm not sure what I thought was going to happen, but I didn't get a feeling for the level of oddness that emerged fairly quickly in the class.  First off, I presumed that class would be small.  Wrong.  Tonight we are having a blizzard and no one is driving. I even questioned this myself as I drove slowly to our down town.  If anything, the class should have been small.  Out of 20 I get about 17.  Unbelievable.  

Although they didn't really catch my attention at first, two of the students really started decompensating as the hour went on. The first, a little girl who could star in commercials she was so cute, began to talk and would never cease.  So I would stop her for a few moments and she would pick right up.  Not terrible, but a bit exasperating.  The boy next to start belching like a fraternity guy at a kegger.  I couldn't believe it.  He followed this by staggering bouts of foul gas that made moving around him a challenge.  After asking to go to the bathroom - thank god! - he came back completely out of sync with class.  He started grabbing his face and pulling his eyes down so only the whites would and begin moaning.  "I'm a ghoooosssttttt," he would groan.  

This was during a whole class of movement with people that had no idea how to hold a line either.  So Cherub, who was nice enough to help out,  and I would try to straighten folks out suppress outbursts and class moving.  No surprise the hour flew by.  We even went over, but I was starting to suspect that the parents were getting a little antsy due to the weather.  

Cherub and I stayed and working on in-fighting, side roll-outs and then tomonagi (belt throw).  After a couple of bad landings on my part I was glad to let that go for the evening.  

I'm out of the country for the next couple of weeks, so unless something strikes my fancy - I'm out!

Blind Man's Bluff

Due to the incredibly busy schedule at work, which often requires me to work late into the evenings, I count myself lucky to attend class on the rare occasion. In the last month I've been able to come back to class with some regularity and have found incredibly fun and full of thoughtful exercise.  

Although I rarely have the time to capture all the great stuff we've been working I wanted to do a couple of posts on the highlights.  Two weeks ago the adult class was down to the three of us (Frenchie, Cherub and Myself) and Teacher.  Always looking at the bright side, Teacher had a class where we would repeat some esoteric move until we are blue in the face.  After the beginning sequence he would pull me aside to practice something "fun".  In this case he grabbed an old belt and blindfolded me.  
 
The goal of this was to reduce dependence on site and focus on tactile clues, but the neatest things was that without too much warm up you could call out where your opponents parts were located.  I could pick up the chin, neck and elbow pretty regularly (with some serious errors here and there) and with more accuracy than I would have said was possible.

He moved on to sparring in the most mildest sense and it was pretty glorious in that with a blindfold on I could still do basic and sometimes advanced moves.  I totally had a flash back to Bloodsport where VanDamme is hunting around for his bad guy and flashes back to his vision impaired training.  Easier than I thought, but I definitely have to be touching a guy to know what's going on.