Knees Reborn

I remember reading this fantasy story when I was young. After being tortured, a wizard heals himself and at the relief from pain he groaned.  His cell mates assumed he was groaning from pain.

During one of the numerous visits we had in the last week, my friend the PT came over from Idaho and suggested I take some Ibuprofen for an unrelated muscle ache.  Later, when I was in the shower I bent down to clean the wall and was so surprised that the pain in my knee was absent that I lost my balance. 

I actually thought something was wrong.  I took a couple of tentative deep knee bends and found that I was apparently cured for the afternoon.  Much to my distinct pleasure I found out that on the next day the pain had not returned.

When last night started coming up I had a mental reminder to take a small dose before class started.  I remembered and took some before I went and low and behold I had a great hour which included the ten ryu turning jump into a kneeling position.  I could lower myself without a problem.  What happiness!

I practiced Koryu a few times and my frozen toe still makes it difficult to come up well, but my knee didn't hurt so I was very happy there as well.  

On a side note, I got my blood pressure taken and it was down to 120/80.  I've been holding at 193 pounds due to eating well and cutting my drinking down.  All in all doing well physically, but I'm due to take another colonoscopy next month.  Sigh.

Crinkly Knees

One of the moves in Koryu (Ni Pai Po) is that I drop to one knee and then spring up with a elbow strike.  Unfortunately the repetitive action has made my left knee feel like I'm grinding glass under the knee cap. 

The Senseis are practical and have asked me to not kneel for awhile, but it feels like everything we do lately requires a kneeling position at one point or another.  Then my knee goes back to complaining. 

Last night I got to the BB class and we worked on learning/refining ten ryu no con ni.  The second in a series of three staff kata.  My lack of weapons experience makes this very attractive and generally speaking pretty darn fun.  It's action packed and the end contains a spinning jump.  Of course you have to land in a kneeling stance.  Argh!

We practiced that the whole hour which was a lot of exercise considered all the starting and stopping we were doing.  Since we were using staffs and there were four of us Sensei had us move into the street.  Of course the neighbors all stopped what they were doing and stared at us for awhile which I enjoyed.  However, attention spans being what they are people soon went back to whatever they were doing.  We joked that they would be staying longer if we started hitting each other.

Regular class consisted of reviewing Wando and doing elbow techniques.  Since I'm in the "advanced" group I had to take a lot of falls on the hardwood.  I'm feeling it pretty good/bad today.  Super stiff.

NPP Process Check

It's been a month now since I started working on Koryu Ni Pai Po.  In a big press, Olivia and I worked through the whole Kata last night.  The result below is rather hurky-jerky, as befits a new kata, but you can see that I get to the end with occasional prompting.

This is one of the few super long kata that are in all the black belt testing levels.  Although there is nothing necessarily hard about the techniques there is a lot of them.  I guess I have another coming up with a similar length.  Ugh.

Koryu Ni Pi Po - so slow it hurts

Here's my current progress report on my 2nd degree:

1. Haku Cho
2. Haku Cho Dai
3. Haku Tsuru No Onna
4. Haku Tsuru No Ottoko
5. Kaku Fa
6. Haku Tsuru
7. Rohai Shodan
8. Wando
9. Ni Pai Po
10. Kuryo Ni Pai Po

I clearly have to keep working on KNPP for awhile before I move on, but it's nice to see some progress.  I gather from Olivia that Ni Pai Po is the more current form and they are close enough to cause a headache.  Yuck.

She is learning the kata in reverse order from me, but it appears that she had some experience with these before she took an extended break so she's learning at a rapid pace in comparison to me. 

In the adult class we learned Ten Ryu no Cone something.  It's my second weapons kata so I got a kick of learning something new, but my brain is pretty full so I had a lot of problems with it. Still cool stuff. 

A Little Progress

Holy Cow!  I lost a month when I wasn't paying attention.  Well, that's not accurate.  My wife and I decided to add a new bathroom to our house and as the primary workers all our time has been consumed trying to get it done. We had originally thought it would take two weeks.  How cute. We found out that you always multiple by twice when making the estimate and that's still shy since we are still working on it.  Thankfully we are down to paint and some fine trim.    

Since we've changed the schedule a bit, I now go to the Black Belt only training first which provides a great warm up, but we had our first warm day yesterday in some time and the garage where we practice was overly hot.  A few of the others wore t-shirts and immediately chided myself for thinking I should be fully suited.  I was immediately sweat soaked. 

While I've been gone one of the few returning black belts has started studying for 2nd degree as well.  They wanted us to study together, but while I was gone she learned the entire Koryu Ni Pi Po.  So last night she had the dubious honor of teaching me the rest of the kata.  Due to it's length we were only able to move forward a bit more.  Daniel Sensei says that I'm a little over half way. 

We finished up the session with a couple exercises devised from the kata Pachu. There is three elbows and then a take down.  Always fun. 

On the way to class I noticed a man by the side of the road.  He was on his side and there was some blood.  I assumed he was hit by a car so I pulled over as quickly as I could and ran over to him.  A small group of people went to his aid and we found out he stumbled while mowing and fell on his face.  He had a hell of cut on his face from his glasses.  He was pretty disoriented, but his wife had come out.  We had him on his feet by the time I left.  I realized later that he might have been on blood thinners by the way of he was bleeding. 

In regular class we worked on foundational moves from the kata Wando.  Which was a nice review for me because it's one that I need to have squared away for my test. 

It took me a very long time to get to sleep last night, probably due to the excitement of being in class, but I got the added bonus of foot cramps when I finally relaxed.  When I did get I sleep very hard and had pleasant dreams.