A lot of the Black Belt Test was standing for five to ten seconds while the board took notes and commiserated and, frankly, a lot of the stuff I did didn’t look overly impressive. So in order to keep your attention I made a highlights reel.
Teacher called me before class and talked about preparation for his month long departure. In a moment of drunkenness I volunteered to take the adult class while he was gone on vacation. Let me stress that I, in no way, feel comfortable with this task. For whatever reason I felt that there was an obligation to the class to continue on, but I sure as hell don’t feel like I’ll even do half the job that he does.
Noting my anxiety Teacher had me not only lead warm-ups, but do the first hour lead in. I was able to this without too much trouble, but honestly didn’t have a lot of ideas for the second hour. When I asked if I should continue at the hour break he took over to my relief. It’s going to be a long month for me and the class.
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During a moment of quiet I noticed that Little Sister wasn’t in the class and asked Teacher if she had left already. He was somewhat mystified, but it became clear when she came in at halftime. She thought we went back to the Fall schedule this week.
We worked on trips and throws for the second hour, but near the end of class Teacher had us all sit down and had Little Sister stand alone. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but the air was filled with a lot of positive energy no matter what. Teacher announced that LS would be get to fight whoever she liked. She covered her eyes and spun and ended up picking him. After they finished a few minutes later I volunteered to go next and we tore it up! I ended up with a stubbed toe and and torn skin on my wrist. The remaining fights were pretty sterling and if Teacher could figure out how to get them off his Blackberry I’d post it here because we were awesome.
After class we took plenty of pictures, had lots of hugs, and promised we’d all keep in touch. Hopefully, we’ll see her during the college breaks.
Teacher once told me his frustration with earning a black belt was that it didn’t come with a bag of magic tricks. I think he figured he’d be able to to jump to the second story and be able to single handedly defeat multiple magical warriors or something. Well, that’s my take on it anyway.
Since he told me that many years ago I’ve managed to keep my realistic hat one and not get too worked up about what would happen about achieving the belt. Mostly, I’ve felt that I haven’t deserved it or felt ready for it, but I did get to experience a little magic last night.
I noticed in the last two weeks that I’ve been able to pick up techniques after one exposure without any real difficulty. So I’ve decided to attribute this to the magic of the belt rather than the fact that I’ve been doing this for 8 years and that all the building blocks are in place to grab the pieces from other lessons and tons of practical experience. It’s totally the magic.
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Storm, our black belt via TKD, has been studying our katas/hyungs and has pretty much memorized them all in about two months. He’s now on to the Black Belt ones that I’ve only recently dipped my feet into. Teacher asked us to try them together and we definitely had different impressions of what we seen. I went back to the tapes and had to correct a bit. We are both now on the same page.
Question – how long do we keep practicing basic katas? I stick with the more advanced ones so I don’t forget them, but when we go back to the first couple I stumble around because I forget them. Derp!
I started cardio and anaerobic training two months before the test in hopes that I wouldn’t look like this through most of the test. Alas, I did.
Teacher says, “it’s a kata a green belt could do, so you better do it like a Black Belt”. I thought it looked technically decent, but I wished I could have been lower.
I reached inside my gym bag with it’s signature Tang Soo Do fist at either end and pulled out my brand new Black Belt. I rolled it around in my hands a little and told the guys in the changing room that this was the first time.
Their response, “man I would have worn that around the house, “ and “I would have worn that naked around the house”. Good men all.
Teacher called me Sensei Tater at one point to which I ducked my head. I really don’t feel like I’m a Sensei, since such a large part of the class has been there for awhile and know my good and bad points intimately. Still, I can see where the change in thinking and pride in my accomplishment has started taking place. At my wife’s birthday party I was doing falls to rolling standups in the front lawn while delivering drinks and then teaching folks how to do come-along wrist and should locks. What a dork I am.
I spent most of the class working with our newest and youngest student trying to get her up to speed on the basics. We might be a bit beyond her skill acquisition level, but I’ll have to let Teacher figure that out. I’m not sure what he does to decide if they go into adult or youth class, but folks like this gal fall right on the line.
In a moment of insanity about a month or so ago I told Teacher that I’d be willing to take the class for the month of September while he’s out of town. I feel somewhat sorry for the class since they are going to see me learning to teach all over again. Tough on me and tough on them. I’ll probably start to relax by the time Teacher gets back.
Long story short – I passed my Black Belt test.
I’m filled with all sorts of emotions; pride and disappointment being the most prevalent.
The test lasted about a half hour and consisted of running me through a variety of basic techniques like kicks and strikes, then pad, or focus mitt, drills. I then performed Pyung Ohn Sa Dan, Oh Dan, Bassai and my test kata. They had me do my test one twice. The final section was fighting. I did four or five matches which couldn’t have been more than 30 seconds a piece and finished it up with a three against me match.
I’m proud that I’ve accomplished the belt, but I was disappointed in that I wished I could have shown a better performance to the judging panel. I have yet to see the tapes (just thinking about it is making me nervous), but even during the test I have to admit I didn’t look or feel very sharp at times. That coupled with my constant need for air made for a lot of breaks. When I cobble together the video I can guarantee that will be left out.
After each section of the test and even during sub sections the panel would stop to take notes and commiserate while I gasped and wheezed. At one point one of the panel came up and did a breathing exercise with me just to help. Pretty embarrassing. But it wasn’t like I could say I was fine, because I literally couldn’t.
During the focus drills that same panel member wanted to see combinations with a leg focus and he actually asked me, “do you have a favorite kick”? Best thing I’d every heard, but we’d just done snap kicks so I choose crescents and during one of the runs my left ankle made a sizable impact on his left elbow. Owww. My left ankle is somewhat swollen today.
I got chided for turning and walking away at one point (watch your back!) and got pointers throughout the test which I’m sure I should be taking at just a pointer, but internally I kept groaning at what I thought were obvious errors I shouldn’t be making.
I could keep writing about this until I was blue in the face, but to sum it up everyone gave me a lot of compliments and Teacher seemed genuinely pleased that I did as well as I could. My personal shame was that I was not in the shape that I clearly needed to be.
What compounded that feeling was when I was later read the score sheets, that pretty clearly pointed at mediocrity, to which my wife could only agree with. While she is no martial artist she has a shrewd eye as it relates to performance in any area. She’s seen me in several competitions and has a sense of how I move and definitely knew how nervous I was. When I searched my gut I realized that it was true when I’d rather have been excellent.
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I was proof-reading this and if it sounds like I’m being hard on myself – I am. I’ll try to embrace my achievement and give it the respect it’s due.
Anxiety seems to lead to a lack of sleep, which in turn, allows anxiety to fester. Not the greatest way to approach the upcoming test, but it’s also not a surprise either. I usually martial through all of this and do okay, but the nagging lack of energy I’m experiencing is making me frustrated.
On Monday I went for an epic run (5k, cross country) and did better than my first time on that course, and assumed that I’d sleep like a corpse, but I ended up wide awake only getting minimal sleep. So getting to class last night took a huge amount of energy on my part.
On top of that Teacher ran a pretty physically demanding class (or maybe I was just so tired it felt that way). At the end of class I’d completely soaked my gi, but so had the rest of the guys.
Teacher had me demonstrate my kata/hyung at the end of class and everyone said it looked sharp. I have to admit I was pleased as well because I did it with a lot of intensity and did it correctly. Teacher had only one suggestion which should be easily installed (slow down in one area).
If I can do a big carb laden dinner tonight and tomorrow for lunch I’m hoping things will go well in the energy area.
I guess the season must be upon us because Teacher let me know that he was testing Little Sister last night. She’s been there for probably four or five years now and she’s leaving us for College at the end of the month.
We started class as usual, but halfway through the second hour we sat down for the test. Although we didn’t the three Black Belts Teacher ran her through a wear down for about 15 minutes before her kata and fights. She looked good, but Teacher changed things out, but having her fight a majority of the class one minute at a time. I’d actually never seen her wrung out before and by the time she completed with Teacher (the last bout) she was bleeding out a loose thumbnail and could barely keep her arms up.
Previously to her testing we were working on up close fighting and I was partnered with Dave. Alas I took a shot to the face and ended up getting rocked on my heels. I thought I was going to lose a tooth, but everything turned out fine. Although he’s got a cut on a knuckle very much like the one he gave me last month!
Not me, but what I felt like.
Teacher ended the class, but asking when I’d like to test. I guess we’ll be trying next week if he can gather the other Black belts. I’m getting nervous just typing this out!
Ever mindful of how grueling the Brown belt test was, my focus has been directed at my cardiac fitness. Luckily one of my friends is a physical therapist and has a impressive knowledge in sports training. Unfortunately, he reckons that I need to focus on anaerobic exercise as it matches my level of activity during testing.
About two or three weeks ago I tried emulate what that might be by taking a look at various workouts on-line and mirroring what I could. My normal workout is kata, rowing machine, kata, burpees, etc. If I can do 40 minutes I’m impressed with myself. I’ve estimated that 170 bpm is my anaerobic threshold and my PT has told me that I need to get up there and work at that for 30 seconds or more and then bring it down to 165 or less for a few minutes and then drive it back up.
So Dave calls me up and asks me to go running with him as part of his routine and I think to myself, “what a great idea. I’ll be able to confirm my level of fitness in an objective fashion”. I told Dave that I’d probably be able to do a mile, but after that I couldn’t say. No problem we’d run as far as we could, follow it up with walking and then sprint up hill on a 5K course. I should have known ahead of time that I’d be pushing myself well beyond my capabilities.
The first mile was entirely pleasant, I was pushing 160+ most of the time so a small hill would blast me past 170. It’s the perfect interval training! And then we got to mile 2. I wasn’t blacking out, but I definitely just couldn’t get enough air – what a horrible feeling. Objectively, I thought this was really exactly what I needed, but subjectively the feeling of suffocation is about as worse as it gets for me. On top of that Dave looked very relaxed and not out of breath at all. If I had the energy I would have been bitter and jealous.
By mile three I was mostly walking fast but he had designed his course with the hills at the very end of the track and as agreed upon earlier we had to run up the hills. Perfect for anaerobic work, but now my legs weren’t cooperating. The simply weren’t functioning. I’ve heard people say that it’s like moving through molasses and I would say that was very accurate, but on top of that I couldn’t breath. On the last hill I was faltering and had to restart the running many times and just fell over at the top. Dave hauled me to my feet and made me walk around for another 10 minutes. He’s the devil.
When I was somewhat rested I wanted to show him my test kata and could barely get through it. No balance or strength. Yikes.
Today I feel like someone beat me with hammers. Ugh.
I had to miss Thursday night class because of work pushing it’s nosey requirements into my life. I had some visiting folks from the mother ship in the big city and had to squire them around. It’s not like they were bad or anything, but I had to get them back to the airport after an exceedingly long day. I just had to remind myself, “this is why I get paid”.
Class was still going on for a bit when I showed up so I said hi and made an appointment to hang out with Teacher on Friday. I’d put together a few more pieces and parts to my kata and wanted to find out if I was going in the correct direction. Here’s were I’m at, but I’ve got a slightly different ending after the double punches.
Instead of the jumping axe at the end I’ve got some hand work. Teacher made it very clear – “This is a kata that a green belt can do, but you’d better be doing the techniques all at a Black belt level”. Yikes!
I talked to Teacher this weekend and told him that I’d gotten a bit further with my test Kata and was hoping to meet up with him to check my progress. I really didn’t want to be moving on and have him rework a bunch of my stuff. I’m not terribly smooth with the few things I have so to have major changes would be a bit anxiety producing.
We met early yesterday and I went through my starting sequence, one long pass and second sequence. Teacher corrected a few pieces and changed around the entry and substance of the second pass. I feel kind of bad because he’s such a part of it and won’t have any surprise, but I’m guessing he wants me to look good in front of the other Teachers.
Needless to say I’m getting rather excited by the test, but not having a clear idea of when it’s going to occur makes me a bit anxious. Preparations for something nebulous make me nervous of course, so I’m just focusing on the kata and my cardio. Currently I’m using my rower every other day to grind out 5000 meters and that pushes my endurance to it’s limit. It’s roughly around 25 minutes at 160 bpm. I follow that with kata work and I can burn 500+ calories in a hour. I’m hoping the alternating exercises will pay off in the sparring and whatever they throw at me.
Dave has offered to take me on a running date, but I’m not much of a runner. However, I’ll try to make a mile on Friday night on his normal 3 mile cross country course. It’ll be a good measurement of muscles and fitness.
As usual, the ramp up to testing brings Teacher Slim out of the woodwork. It felt like a year since I’ve seen him in class, but he was in his regular jovial mood and still applied a wonderfully painful twist to everything we did. I mention his presence because for my Brown Belt test he simply asked me to spell Tang Soo Do. I was grateful for the rest break, but I couldn’t spell to save my life. At the end of class he asked me some basic Karate terms in Japanese. I only know a few of these, but wondered if he was going to ask me that on the test. I just made my flash cards!
Now that my system seems to have settled from my vacation I’ve been focusing on fitness and my kata. Although this won’t help me aerobically or anaerobically I thought it was pretty kick ass.
Such a simple set and so good.
My kata is coming along finally. I don’t have anything very fancy so the form is a standard “I” shaped form. I’ve taken some hand techniques from our 10th hyung, Neihan Shi Cho Dan, but Teacher has had me simply focus on things that I do well and where I can demonstrate that I’ve mastered the technique (balance, execution, etc.). I’ll try to get some video of that so I can check my own progress and express chagrin at my horrible performance.
I went down to Central America to visit my wife for a couple of weeks and had a great time, but as it relates to my practice I was pretty bad. Our schedule is usually very compressed so there is little time or space to practice kata or technique. However, during long rides I was able to start the mental work on my Black Belt test kata. I’ve got the first eight moves nailed down and after last night I’m ready move to the next four or five.
Upon return to the States I ran into a rather frustrating phenomena – persistent diarrhea. It was if as soon as I had water in Northern America my body went into total shock. I’ve been home almost a week now and I’ve been barely able to get through a work day and I definitely haven’t been to the gym. After a four days of meds I thought I could do class last night, but I was dragging hard. One of Teacher’s favorite questions is, “are you alright?” when I’m panting. Last night the answer was, “no”.
Each day I’ve been incrementally better, but today seems to the closest to a low level of regular health. This weekend I’ll construct the next four moves or more. And then try to get a bit of cardio in. Boy do I look skinny.
I just realized that I haven’t posted since last Tuesday due to a rather busy schedule. My wife is out of town for the summer so I’m doing all the stuff around the house that would normally be divided between us. As usual I forget that although it’s not a lot of stuff, it’s still more than I do normally so I have less time to dawdle.
To add to general frantic nature of my day Teacher moved up the summer classes one hour. So we get out early, but we have to get there early. This means I’m moving fast after work. I basically have enough time to change and eat a bit before I hit the ground running.
So I can’t actually recall what we did last week, and even last night was a bit of a blur, but we did have a couple of stand out moments.
We call generic multiple attack scenarios “monkey in the middle”. However due to the latest racial sensitivity problems I believe the word monkey is going to get dropped. It consists of 5 person groups in which one participant stands in the middle and the other four try to attack in a consistent fashion. It has nothing to do with real life, but it forces the person in the middle to contend with strikes initiated from every angle and not get tunnel vision for one person. It also forces us to work on strikes that are really effective versus flowery locks and such.
What we found out is that kicks to the groin and strikes to the throat were very popular, then came kicks to joints and so on. Very focusing.
Teacher quote for the week: as I tried to tap out of a rather painful lock – “you look like a penguin flapping it’s wings to stay warm.” Nice.
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All of us looked like we ran across hot coals as we uncomfortably moved from one foot to the other or stared at the soles of our feet. This was a direct result of the new rubberized sports floor put in several months ago. Unfortunately kicks that require foot rotation are miserable because feet don’t want to turn at all on rubber. I was noticing after my shower later that night I had actually torn the flesh between the toes and ball of both my feet. This morning I was was walking very carefully. Hopefully, they’ll be mostly healed by tomorrow night.
Since I was only there for the first hour I didn’t get to experience anymore discomfort. However, in that 45 minutes I was huffing and puffing. My poor diet and lack of sleep really felt like they were weighing on me. Hopefully, I’ll be back on a more even keel by the end of the week.
I knew, in those microseconds before, during and after my fist making a sickening crunch, that we had gone too far.
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As part of the summer Teacher moves the class up an hour so we can get out and enjoy the long sunny evenings. Unfortunately, the class hasn’t adjusted to this change so we are in variety of states. Personally, I was half a bubble off – dropping keys and bumping into things all day. Dave was so hungry that he had dull eyes and we had the addition of two news kids in the class.
We were learning how to integrate the long punch into our regular work. This is move comes from our 3rd kata (Kee Cho Hyung Sam Boo) in which the punch ends up out to the side, but the force is generated by a massive hip rotation. I’ll have to do a video of this because it’s emphasis is totally neglected in videos I plowed through today. Anyway, while were learning to do this Teacher decided to throw in an odd block in which you spin you opponents arm in a large spiral so you can move in to do a standing triangle choke (yet another video to make!). However the timing was tougher than I imagined so I managed to only get things going after 10 minutes. By that time we had run out of class time.
I was getting very frustrated which in turn makes me worse at everything I’m doing. Which is why we are back at the first sentence.
Teacher says, “Do a little rondori for the last five minutes.” We usually interpret this as very slow sparring to work on technique and strategy. Since I was frustrated and discombobulated our speed immediately took off and I couldn’t get a hit in to save my life. Out of the five minutes I had one minute in which I was able to pick out Dave and take advantage of his approach, but by and large he was eating me up.
Our exchanges got wilder and in one of my poorly executed kicks I ended up getting kicked in the ass so hard that I had a hard time walking this morning. In the final hurrah I shot a punch over a blocking arm, unfortunately Dave was moving at the time and he got my knuckles in his mouth. Blood starting running out of his fat lip and my hand. I was appalled.
I have never lost that kind of control and been so emotionally unfocused. What a horrible lesson. Thankfully Dave didn’t take it personally even though I was all over the board myself. When I called him today he was just counting his wounds and I started worrying about the cut on my hand – blood born infection is always a worry. Neosporin do you work!
My first years in TSD were marked with frequent “Aha!” moments. Over time those became sporadic as the learning of new skills was overtaken by the refinement of those very same skills.
As of the last few years they have become far and few between. I was warned of this by Teacher and haven’t really thought about it much until something struggled to the surface about three weeks ago. Teacher is very clever and adaptable at times so a move he promotes may not exactly come from the Big Tang Soo Do book or his older practiced styles. However, he’ll do them if they work and have a minimum of cons.
So about three weeks ago we were working on entering our opponents space using the simple zenkutsu stance. At first I was uncomfortable with giving my back to the opponent, but with the proper loading and speed I believe it to be a great set up for a throw.
After a few weeks of testing this out it dawned upon me that I needed to try this out somewhat formally. Bob, at Striking Thoughts, acted as a Catalyst via some email discussions about being tall and trying to throw.
Here you can see a big dork talk about it:
The second realization was that experience does have a place! One of the young guys in class, Ken, is incredibly gifted. I only have to show him a technique once and he does it perfectly. However when I tell him why we do it that way he gives the look that guys in the video have – blank, but humoring the happy lummox.
When Teacher and I were reviewing the evening he put it this way: “Anybody can shoot a gun. A person with innate talent can shoot well, but if you ask them to shoot in the rain, in the wind, while someone is shooting at them it’s a different story. That’s why Blackbelt mills can be construed as dangerous. The give the belt based on physical ability, but not necessarily the rationale behind what’s occurring or the wisdom to use any of the knowledge correctly.”
All in all – a wonderful night.
It is a rare thing that I have anything near to what I would call “clarity of thought”. I imagine it would be like having the same train of thought for more than a few minutes at a time. Although I’m self-diagnosing I am pretty sure I was one of those kids who was squirrelly and distracted all their lives that was later to be called ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) by the medical establishment. Thankfully I had a parent that was very good with behavior management, but I remember the struggle of trying to focus during years of school, but having to contend a mind that flew about like a flock of birds on the wind.
Over the years I was able to develop some skills to contend with that inability and found that several things really helped. One of those being Martials arts or some intense physical activity. Ironically reading did the same thing assuming that I like the material of course.
So when I sit down to type about what happened the night before I can only recall a few of things we did and get very frustrated over the fact that I can’t recall the things I did successfully or why they worked.
When I add stress to the mix my mind gets even worse. A common occurrence is that I will try to do to things at once and end up spinning in place – literally. The result of having two competing thoughts turn into action. My wife knows when I’m out of control when she saw me go in one direction and then the other and finally end up spinning on the ball of one foot.
This lack of mental cohesion has increased because my wife is leaving for three months to go to an immersive language school out of the country and my single co-worker is leaving for a month’s vacation.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not not good with singularity, but I usually do just fine after the first week. I just have to create a routine and stick to it. A personal kata that doesn’t require a lot of thought. Not a great way to go through life, but at least the plants get watered and I remember to cook for myself now and then.
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Class notes from last week.
Storm got his first green stripe. Teacher is going to test him once a month to get him up to his real rank. His take on our first kata was pretty cool because it looked like it was all TKD instead of TSD.
Teacher reintroduced the low horse stance. 60 seconds of thighs parallel to the ground. Followed by massive kicking exercises. Bad ass!
What with all the hullabaloo around the last couple of UFC fights in which the winner employed a front kick to end the match, has made me dying to integrate the move into our sparring. It’s not that we don’t use it all the time, but the simplicity of the move and my innate flexibility in that area really calls to me.
The only problem is that Teacher has been somewhat reticent to reintroduce sparring because of the plethora of plebeians (I love alliteration). For some reason we had a very light class last night and it was mostly experienced folks. That means that we’d have a better possibility to spar if Teacher ran out of energy making up class content. Luck was on our side as we had ten minutes of class left after practicing kata for 30 minutes.
I got to spar with one of wonder twins and found to my dismay that a slowly performed front kick is easily blocked. What made it worse was his block was horrible. Normally performed the downward block would be more than adequate to stop my half strength kick. However the Twin either didn’t see the kick starting or he started the block really late. Regardless, the top of my foot met up with his elbow while it was faced downwards.
It’s not that this kind of thing doesn’t happen all the time, but for whatever reason my foot got his elbow just right. And by that I mean wrong. When I was getting out of the shower this morning I noticed the obvious swelling and tenderness. Even my wife took a second glance at the apparent blob on top of my foot.
The second match was with the new guy, Storm. He holds a black belt in TKD and doesn’t really used his hands very much in sparring which makes me think he must be from a sports based school. Anyway our interactions would go between badly timed hand exchanges or hopping up and down closely waiting for an opening for a well placed kick. His youth and vigor definitely won out.
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The title of the post is supposed to say “hands of stone and blood”, but I’m really unsure of my Spanish. But you have to admit even if incorrect it sounds great. The rationale behind the title is that I’ve been going through a hand hardening regimen for a couple of years now. Not that it’s much, but I was hoping to lead to a more solid foundation for my mitts.
It’s three steps now days. I have a brick that I backfist and punch (very lightly) 40 to 50 times, I do all my push ups on my first two knuckles (also the same striking spot) and finally added in finger pushups in the last year. I presumed that it would lead to a harder hand and stronger wrist. Since I’ve neglected the knife hand edge strikes in this regimen it appears that it’s the weakest link. During the sparring last night where our blocks seemed poorly timed I ended up blocking with the back of my hand toward the knife edge. Now I’ve got some nice hand bruises to go along my skins, forearms and foot.
I was standing in a moderately deep stance as Swimmer went into zenkutsu (lower stance with one leg bent and the other straight) between my legs. With a sharp twist of her shoulders my front leg went out and forward and my rear was already kind of straight and going no where. My only escape was to fall backward and hope that I could take the stretch I didn’t seem built for. Mental screaming ensued.
It seemed like a nice evening, filled with bonhomie, laughter and effervescent spirit. This should be a warning after all this time; it usually means that focus isn’t on the mark and something is going to get mangled. The first sign – me blocking a kick with an open hand and jamming my ring finger. Nothing bad, but it stung liked I bent it sideways. I was being over dramatic as usual.
Next, as we working on weapons attacks I took a escrima stick from Dave as he swung for my head, but I messed up the technique and we became tangled and the stick fell from his grasp and clocked me on the head. I had to do a few moments of the pain dance before I get back into focus.
The third and final was working with Swimmer. Teacher is very slow about introducing throws into the class, but today was a natural lead in. We were to enter our partners stance and basically trip them with a shoulder twist and slight hip move. Swimmer was doing fantastic until Teacher changed her footing and then the wishbone occurred. I’d like to say that I’m overacting, but it hurts so much because I don’t think my hips joints can move beyond what we are asking of them. It’s not that my groin gets pulled either. It’s just pure pain. I rolled on to my back and just gritted my teeth. I didn’t care what I looked like, but just like always the intense pain stops in a few moments, but it’s actually hard to stand up and remain standing. After about two minutes I’m ready to go. Frustrating, because it’s really effective and I’m not really I can produce a counter.
Teacher finished the class by reminding us that although we were having a really fun time we needed to be concentrating on breathing and focus. I feel like that was my responsibility somewhat since I set the mood during stretching and warm up. I’ll have to concentrate on being a bit more serious.
Kicks, kicks and more kicks. I had hoped that we do some kicking to get that extra bit of exercise. My balance felt good as well. Some nights that’s not the case, but for whatever reason the I was still and centered. Teacher started us off with side kicks and I’d forgotten how doing even 40 can be exhausting. He kept us going by then adding a second kick (lower) without touching the floor between. Presumably to break the habit of going to the floor, but definitely forcing work on balance. Unfortunately I was out of breath with minutes. I’ve returned to holding my breath?!
After break we pulled the matts out for a little ground work and minor aikido. I did the first rolls and falls in 4 to 6 months. It was like I’d never stopped, but I was very nervous about bending my spine. I ended up doing about 6 warm up rolls and stopped there. I took about 20 falls with no problems whatsoever.
The fascinating part of falls part of the evening was that Teacher had everyone work on falls and it was really nice to see everyone do a reasonably decent job. The worst thing was that folks just had a horrible tendency to reach back or bring the elbow down first. As main thrower I’d try to ease them down so they’d slap a bit instead of hit hard, but that was absolutely brutal to my back even with super great posture. I guess when we do this next time I’ll be doing a lot of dropping (of people).
My wife and I recently got a new cat as the house felt pretty empty. I sure with deep introspection we’d probably see that both of us needs to focus on something other than ourselves. Whatever the case the cat provides energy and focus at the house, but it means that a lack of sleep is back into the fore if we don’t make an effort to exercise the cat during the day.
Based on the cat’s behavior we assume that she sleeps all day and then remains awake during the evening. This is exhibited by her sleeping on us, talking to us, sitting on us and cleaning noisily.
As I mentioned in the past I have occasional problems with sleeplessness. The cycle goes something like two nights of bad sleep followed by a night of deep sleep. If I’m lucky I’ll keep on a good schedule for awhile until the next sleeplessness comes up.
You may be asking yourself what this has to do with anything martial. Well, the truth is probably not too much, but sleeplessness has a direct impact on my ability to pay attention and I notice that I’m definitely clumsier in general.
So the notion of going to class at 7 after I’ve been relaxing for a couple of hours is a mental fight. I have to force myself to get up and get moving. Then when I get to class I have to carefully warm up or pull the crap out of some muscle I didn’t know existed.
Short story long – I was yawning so much by the end of class I could hear the other students ears pop from the drop in pressure.
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Class was all about cat stance and then moving people around you. The principle move was cross block, grab the wrist, lock the elbow with the other hand and keep the movement. If done correctly (maybe with a little jerk) the opponent goes flying with little or no work on your part. Mostly we were doing that and basic punch block. I’m a bit sore today, but doing very well after a very long night of sleep. If a tsunami came I’d never hear the alarm.
Teacher pulled me aside after noting my less than stellar attention to detail during a knife hand attack. He held up his forearm and told me to attempt a strike with my shabby hand positioning (my fingers were spread, but my thumb was tucked). Of course the energy of the strike was satisfactory, but my fingers make a nice cracking noise as they whipped at the end. Owww. Error noted and corrected.
Class focused on two major areas – knife hand and round house kicks. Teacher is really just focusing on basics to get the new folks on board and bring everyone else up back to snuff after their month off (mine was three months). My general lack of fitness as it relates to class is making itself known right away. I take pride in my regularity at the gym and my basic level of fitness, but when it comes to our basic exercises I huff and puff like an old steam engine. I know this, but I still have to make a serious effort to ramp up my breathing depth before I even start feeling the first fingers of breathlessness tugging at me.
We started with knife hand technique and added in movement to figure out the hips and how to build everything together. Teacher stopped us and had a new guy, Storm, just do the hands and it pretty much blew us away. Storm has a blackbelt in TKD and something else. It’s apparent that whatever he studied the knife-hand was something he did very well. I swear that he looked like he was moving slow, but there was an audible swish crack with every movement. After his demo everyone was studiously trying to recreate his technique. I’m use we all looked like we were having a sissy slap fight in comparison.
After break we started work on roundhouse kicks. I looked at the high grip floor with some trepidation, fearing the rotation of the foot would be really tough. After a few practice attempts the floor didn’t appear to cause too much problem.
The exercise was block with with a knife hand and then follow with a roundhouse. Teacher purposely put us with folks our own height which is nice, but Dave and I are like two praying mantis getting tangled in our own limbs. Our normal compensation for the limb length and distance problem is to step out a bit during the block to set up for a great kick. This time Teacher stopped that by forcing us switch our weight and kick with the other foot – neat! Depending on what hand I blocked with this was either easy or hard. I quickly gave up on hanging onto to the offending arm for any kind of support.
I was tired and nervous about class for some reason, but it really turned out pretty great.
Since Teacher is on vacation I been devoting my time to sorting out what I can and can’t do physically. My last evaluation at physical therapy left me somewhat upset about those limitations.
Part of my responsibility in class has been leading the warm up and I’ve been doing what Teacher showed me years ago with only a few variations. After having the therapist tell I can no long bend at the waist and do other exotic stretches he showed me alternatives to pretty much everything I needed to do, but the question would be, how would Teacher take a possible change like this?
Since he’s out of town for the next month I was doing a lot of role-playing in my head about how to approach him. Thankfully Beard invited me over to his new in home studio so we could practice katas and I discussed my conundrum to him. Although he didn’t give me a definitive answer I got the feeling that he supports the change given that he’s about 6 years older than me and appreciates the less the extreme warm up I used to do.
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This morning Teacher called me from vacation (half way around the world) and he asked about my back and how things were going and I gave him the thumbnail run down of what the latest progress was. I finally stumbled into my conundrum about the warm ups and he didn’t have a care in the world. He was totally okay with changing things up! Woot!
Now I just have to wait to April to figure out how to tie it all together.
I went to the Doc today and have been officially graduated from my phase of traction, but had a rather frank conversation about what I can and can’t do.
Principally I’ve got to watch my back like a hawk (keeping it straight and strong all the time) and completely adjust my stretching. I went over everything I’ve done for years and he pretty much disallowed every stretch I’ve done. He was trying to tell me all this info and my mind was going to the start of class and how I really couldn’t do any of the stuff I normally did.
I’ve got to talk to Teacher and see if I can recreate the warm up when I start the classes. Talk about monumental. I’m not sure he’ll bite, but if I can’t change that I’ll have to warm up outside of class or something. Crap!
I went to my evaluation session with the PT and felt pretty good before he had me run through things. Alas, I still experience pain at the last one percent of my range and that was enough for him to say that there will be no beatings until that is gone.
So traction weight has increased and the exercise to facilitate ease of movement has become more aggressive. Maybe another month? If so, it will fall in line with his original prognostication.
In the mean time I’m finding it easy to avoid class and hang out with my wife, but I’ve been mostly working. I will say that practice in the mornings feels entirely comfortable except that I can’t do any of the yoga I normally enjoy.
During the evaluation we covered exercises I can and can’t do at the gym which was both nice and frustrating. Weight lifting is such a horrible place to keep a rigid posture. There is so much lifting at a horrible level that I’m constantly gritting my teeth when I notice I’m doing it wrong. Everything good for you has the potential to be bad for you. And everything that tastes good has the potential to be bad for you.
The best part of the recovery is that I’m taking a huge pleasure in being able to sit on the toilet and just plain bending down to pick something up without screeching in pain.
After having a long talk with Sensei during the last weekend I figured I’d better visit class just to say hi to gang at the very least, but as the time got closer I just started feeling worse and worse.
I’ve been going to physical therapy for a little over two weeks and sat down with the doctor to discuss what I was able or capable of doing since we were seeing some nice progress.
You could almost hear the sad trombone.
He said it would be two months before pain would be gone (depending) and a full 8 months before the damage healed completely. During that time I have to make sure I pay huge attention to my spine, it’s curve and any activity that would impact those things.
So that left me with a lot of questions about what I can and can’t do, but deep down it meant that I’m not going to be doing any kicking or bending for a long time.
With all that in mind I went to class and figured I’d be incredibly bitter and depressed and sure enough I was. Class had already begun and everyone was asking how come I couldn’t play. I had a few folks come and talk to me and got a lot of comments about my long face (and I wasn’t even hamming it up! I was surprised that I looked that way to them).
Teacher looked like hell. Red rimmed eyes, slightly swollen jaw, not able to hear, etc. He told me that he had an 104 temperature earlier in the day. He hacked his way through the start up and I thought he was going to keel over a couple of times, but when the gang started pairing off he said, “why don’t you walk around and correct folks?” Music to my ears! I was a bit tentative, but walked around and went to work.
I had only intended to stay for a little bit and ended staying the whole two hours. I walked out floating on a cloud. I can participate! Man did that feel good. Of course a new guy didn’t get the fact that I can’t play and still wanted to take me down at the hips. Just that little jostle sent a zip up and down my back. Must be careful!
I haven’t posted for awhile due to my busy schedule, but mostly because I haven’t been able to do anything since I’ve been back from the Big City. While I was there my Doctor swung through and while we were hanging out I showed him some problems I’d been experiencing. Primarily my right leg seemed to be week in a couple of spots. I was unable to do a calf raise on my right leg and this caused him some concern which, in turn, caused me some concern.
I got back into town last week and the doc did a repeat of the evaluation and I hadn’t gotten worse, but neither was I better. His first thought was to get me to a MRI a.s.a.p, but with a few exercises I noticed a small amount of progress. So we are hold for the MRI, but Beatings has been put on the side line until I can do more physically. This is especially frustrating as I’d hoped to go to class and do a modified workout, but the doctor wants to hold off. I was wondering what I can accomplish, but I’m afraid to go backwards. So I think I’ll watch class and see how everyone is doing and eat bitter.
Diagnosis – injured disk. Pressure on sciatic nerve lead to calve and foot weakness; pain in areas of range of mobility.
Treatment – traction and specific exercise to increase fluidity of nerve channel around hip joint.
Prognosis – ? I guess we wait and see. In the mean I’m a half a man (I can kick on one side with no problem, but barely on the other).
My last night. I was extremely tired and really was thinking about going to bed early, but I needed to get motivated and get to the dojo if for no other reason than to pay for my classes.
In that vein I called Greyhound to see if he was going to the Gojo Ryu class just see if he could motivate me to go to two different classes in one night. He had a presentation so I was right out.
I drug myself out and got there early to watch the kids class which is an entertainment in itself. There was youngster who insisted that she was not sucking her thumb all the while plopping her thumb in her mouth whenever sensei turned his head. He knew it was going on making the few onlookers teeter with stifled giggling.
Sensei seemed to be speaking louder so I had an easier time understanding what was being said and it also meant that I didn’t have to lean over, struggling to understand what he was saying. I was under the impression that leaning over the kneeling line was frowned upon, but I couldn't hear anything if I didn't. Sensei is a very quiet spoken, 6th degree black belt who imparts lessons concisely. As one of the Nidans told me, “his gift is that he knows what to tell you and when to do it.” I was the recipient of this over and over. Just a simple correction of the placement of the arm or correction of center and I was instantly better.
That evening’s class placed an emphasis on taking Uke’s balance via a very minute correction from myself (as the Nage). I really had a hard time believing it, but it was immediately shown to me that it was valid. I was partnered with a 5 foot, 60 year old woman (in Hakima’s – I should have known) whom which I had both hands around her forearm. Through settled her stance and moving a finger she had me moving into a throw position. I think she was literally only half my weight. Unfortunately, I left bruises on her arm. That made me feel uncomfortable.
I mentioned before that the degree of theatricality that seems to accompany Uke’s intended fall makes me feel uncomfortable. I’m not totally over it even on a good day, but getting thrown by a little old lady certainly did lend credence that there discomfort in some positions. If I'm going all in on a hold I'm going to pay a price.
I partnered with a rather bulky guy and my height seemed to put him into a relatively difficult position to which he’d have to dance to get around me. When he’d grunt or make some other noise I’d immediately back off and give him space which would disrupt the exercise and really throw things off. He said, “dude, if it’s really hurting me I’ll roll out – just go through the whole move.” I’ll try. I’ll try.
Finally I get partnered with a guy that’s fully 6’ 5” and about 300 pounds. He was by far the most dramatic of the bunch, but at least he would talk a bit. In retrospect I think that’s what I found so frustrating. The absolute minimum of chatter at all times. I realize that is what is expected, but I’m really from a different mid set.
After class I asked the folks if they socialized together (since I felt rather ostracized) and they reported that some did and some didn’t. It depended on age or if they had family. No clear group whereas my class makes pains to be inclusive at the very least during the class.
In the end I realized that the sense of community was very important to me, but the quality of the teaching was excellent. It was definitely better to come the class with no prior knowledge as I keep dissecting instead of absorbing. Probably a better person would have a better experience. I’d go back though just because there seemed to be something more to learn right around the corner.
I went on vacation to the mid-west for two weeks with the wife. However just before I left my hip starting acting up. The pain never cleared and I finally went and saw the doctor a few days ago. Apparently I’ve got a pinched or enflamed sciatic nerve that makes it very difficult to bend over. I’ve got to go to PT for a bit and stop stretching. Apparently that was making it worse.
Work has decided to send me over the big city for some extra work and training. While I’m there I can attend the Aikido School for two weeks fairly regularly. Can’t wait. I had visited a few years ago for two days and loved every bit of it. This time I’ll remember to wear my white belt and try not to look like a dork trying to remember the ceremonial steps.
After getting my notes on Tuesday night I was really struck with a case of the nerves for the Thursday observation. I went to class early as usual and started vacuuming after I changed. I thought I might as well take advantage of the OCD and anxiety and put it to good use. Teacher could tell I was ramping up and pulled me aside to do some very light sparring. After about two minutes he said, “now do it with breathing.” Ha ha.
He told me before class that I could continue teaching the kids class until I improved. Since I was fairly anxious I immediately starting reading into that. I figured that meant I wasn’t going to get the belt tonight because I had to grow so much more.
The class went smoothly and in retrospect I’d say that I tried very hard to put the notes Teacher gave me into action. Afterword he gave me some more notes, but it started with the fact that I had, in deed, improved vastly. He added that I needed to refine a few areas and, frankly, I knew when I blew it most of the time. Thankfully the kids didn’t seem to mind or notice when I’d flub something. Teacher, I think, I was mostly focused on my ability to control the class and still move forward.
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I’ve been fighting some intense pain in my right hip as a result of some bad falls on Tuesday which were exacerbated with our kneeling to standing kick exercises. Ironically a low stance eases the pressure on my hip, but ibuprofen is really the best prevention and treatment. Of course I forgot to take that before class in my fit of anxiousness.
Of course we do those very same kicks last night and I was accompanied in my discomfort by others who weren’t quite healed up as well.
We did some “return to basics” type exercises that really worked on using the hips to initiate turns and then went on to two-step sparring. At the end of class one of the new students was tested for his first green stripe and frankly looked better than most of us when we did ours.
At the bow-out Teacher says, “Congrats to new guy on his green tip and everyone give Tater a round of applause on his first black tip.”
Wait, what?
I blushed furiously and then everyone clapped. Which was immediately followed by comments like, “Did I miss something?” and “hunh?”
After class bowed out I had to explain to folks about the observations and teaching the kids class were the requirement.
I practically skipped out. I got home, swept my wife off her feet, drank two glasses of wine and promptly went to bed and snored loudly. As befits the man on his way to the 1 in a 1000.
As part of my testing criteria for this stripe I’m required to teach two kids classes while being observed by two black belts.
After the class completed Teacher pulled me aside to give me some notes.
“Tater” he said. “If you get into a fight with five guys and you focus on only one guy, what’s going to happen?”
“I get my ass kicked by the other four guys.” I replied.
“Well, that’s what happened in class tonight,” he finished wryly.
Apparently my OCD nature got the best of me because I spent half the class fixating on the one new kid who couldn’t do anything while the rest of the class started to wonder away from their lines or lose their attention in some other fashion.
I was kind of feeling good about the class, but after he pointed that out I started to realize that I had let a lot of stuff go poorly because I’d focus on something either too long or try a concept that was too involved for their ages.
Later Teacher gave me so more notes which I think will be the hardest of all to sort out.
- Talk to the children as adults – not down to them
- You are not in a democracy – you control the class
- Off task behavior needs to be addressed immediately
and so on.
Needless to say I’m going to simplify my content on Thursday and try to keep things as professional as possible. Teacher said that he’ll make me teach the class until I get it right. Ugh.
I was having this internal conversation with myself yesterday.
“I completely exhausted from work and poor sleep for the past couple of nights. I’ve got a second job that’s sucking the life out of me. I should probably skip beatings tonight.”
“The whole point of beatings is that it’s something you do no matter how you’re feeling or what state you’re in. So you should go – it’s not just for your physical fitness.”
“I know I’m in a foul mood though. It makes for a tough night.”
“Right. Whatever. You’re sounding pretty whiney now. You’ve got to go early and work with the kids to show proper spirit and also get ready for next week’s observations.”
So I went. I’m my own worst and best litigator.
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As usual the kids class blasted by at high speed. I only started the class off and Teacher didn’t have any notes after words so that was nice. The rest of the time I walked around doing corrections and holding a pad for the kids to kick. Another Blackbelt was helping out since his little girl is in the class. I’d love to see him in the adult class, but his schedule won’t permit it.
Teacher started the adult class at level 11. To improve our legs and kicking he had us do lunge kicks. We haven’t done these in over five years. Basically you’re in seiza (a side note – when I looked up the spelling, one of the suggestions was seizure!), you come up on one leg and then go into a front snap kick. I wasn’t even sure my knees could handle that, but there was no particular evidence showing itself that I couldn’t so I soldiered on. We commenced doing this up and down the floor and no amount of breathing would alleviate the fact that I felt like I was walking up Kilimanjaro.
I was doing the hands on knees pose after that and realized my gluteal muscles were locking up. Apparently sitting all day at a desk job does exactly nothing for you in terms of fitness.
To add insult to injury, the bulk of the rest of the night was balance exercises. The bulk of that was being able to maintain balance on one leg, crouch down low, and defend against attacks. About 10 minutes I was unable to crouch at all and my ankles could barely support my weight.
The final blow was the attack line. The class was split into two groups. One person, in the one leg position, is attacked and has to remain in that position while either passing the attacker or locking them. I was the first to defend. Since I was totally shaking with fatigue even the smallest bump would knock me over. After five folks attacking I rotated out and became and attacker.
Teacher started that rotation and, of course, made it painful. He blocked my kick hooked it and moved it up pass my ability to stretch. I couldn’t swivel my hips properly and end up having to take a back fall. It’s not that I can’t take the back fall, but the pain created in making me do it is almost unendurable. After I got up I had to limp for a few minutes before I could put weight on my leg. In another rotation Beard chopped me on the neck (he loves to do this) while he had my leg. Yet another time he locked my elbow out painfully and I had to take a front fall to escape the lock. Teacher makes the comment to me, “well, it was your fault.” I had to hide a look of surprise. At this point I’m the only person taking falls during a simple exercise. Conclusion = schlemiel. The perpetual bungler. Most certainly something I don’t want to be. Of course gritting my teeth in pain management and frustration really makes for a smooth flow (read ironically).
I got home completely warn out with not a lot of humor and feeling very frustrated about class. My wife is not sympathetic to this sort of thing, but I vented for a few minutes even while I realized that my exhaustion was exacerbating the situation. Thankfully, she just echoed a bit of my comments to make me feel heard and I was better. We watched a bit of comedy on TV and that helped as well.
Now that I’m typing this out the next day I can feel a lot of that frustration surging to the surface. I keep telling myself that I’m not going to be taken advantage of by Beard, but that’s extremely difficult when you have to give yourself to a person during exercises. A constant vigilance is required I suppose. And I guess I need to make sure I take a quick retaliation to let him know that’s unacceptable. I give him way too much lee-way because he’s a black belt in Judo. He’s still a green and my junior in TSD, but it’s counter my personality to be a dick in any case.
Sooo tired.
I showed up early for the kids class again based on a hint from Teacher. My observations got moved back to next week so he wants me to keep up with the kids so they can continue to keep comfortable with me as well as me being comfortable with them.
I wouldn’t say that I was doing very well with them, but neither was it horrible. I’m still using words that are too big and trying to describe concepts that are too much for most of them. Teacher also pointed out that I might be using a bit too much humor. It gives the really frisky kids permission to do the same.
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Adult class was packed. 17 people! I wasn’t quite awake and feeling somewhat stressed about work and the kid’s class when Teacher announced that we’d be working on blocking kicks. If there’s anything that catches my attention it’s that. There is nothing in our compendium of exercises that causes so much soft tissue damage in a single event.
No one else seemed terribly concerned which I think is absurd, but it could because I don’t have any meat on my forearms where I need it for this type of work.
I got partnered with Dave for a low block/front snap kick combo. He let me kick first which I thought was nice, but I immediately developed swelling bruises over both sides of my ankles. After awhile I had to ask him to block farther up just so we could continue further. After we switched off it was my turned to block for which I totally had to get psyched up for. Of course within the first two kicks from Dave I could feel the bruises rising. So instead of the normally crappy, shallow breathing I do anyway, I was clamping my jaws shut trying to manage the pain.
After all the whole point here is to teach us that pain isn’t necessarily damage and we don’t have to retreat from it. Trying to get my brain around that fact is really tough though.
Man, did I sleep great. Total freaking exhaustion.
I remember this scene in the movie, Constantine, in which Keanu presses his forearms together and the audience gets to see a nifty tattoo of a star from two merged designs.
I have this now, but completely composed of bruises. Not like this hasn’t happened before, but I’m really having a hard time placing my forearms on anything. So typing is a challenge because I have to do it correctly – with no contact. At least I’m foiling carpal tunnel.
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I went a little early again in hopes that my presence might be a motivating force to move my class teaching observations up in the priority list. Instead I got teach the kids round house kicks and run around with a focus mitt. Honestly it was a good warm up for me.
Teacher’s notes: “I think you’re still being a little too nice to them.”
During the adult class I covered the basic one-step sparring that is inherent in TSD and demoed the standard – left middle block, punch, punch, side kick. In my mind this is the easiest exercise ever, but as usual Teacher was correct, in that I had a lot of blank looks and struggling to keep up. Man, teaching is totally a patience exercise. Breaking things down is the real art.
One of the exercises we worked on was the double knife hand block. I was partnered with Dave and he wasn’t holding back on the striking portion. I couldn’t seem to get my act together and just like magic Teacher appears to point out what I already know. Thankfully he was pushing me to kick higher. I really enjoyed the look of surprise on Dave’s face as I kicked to his chin while close up.
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Teacher called me today to confirm observation days! Next Thursday and the Tuesday after that. Moving on up!
Life Lesson 42: Heavy squats at the gym and while fighting a cold is a really bad idea the day before class.
I went early for the kids class in hopes that I could warm up my legs a bit. Squats the day before had left me stiff and inflexible. Dealing with the sniffles on the side also made it hard to get my blood pressure up and going. The kids class went by quickly, but I never really warmed up. Teacher plainly has a good time teaching that class, but I was totally out of it.
The adult class went by quickly, but during the second hour we were knocking each other off our feet. The standard move being that we slide our leg in behind the Uke’s calf and simply straighten our leg. The Uke’s leg goes flying out.
As Uke with my neophyte partners I’d end up crashing to the floor to save ripping my groin muscles. More experienced partners would do the “pop” and then catch me to reduce the odds of doing a split.
Near the end of the night Teacher came around and started working on refining the move. In my case he pointed out that I needed to stop being shy and grab the face of my Uke to “steer” him. As usual he demoed on me, but for whatever reason my normal flexibility was gone and his steering left me in a position where I could neither fall to my back or grab him for support. A blinding flash of pain in my hips, coupled with an inadvertent yelp and I was able to get a knee under and fall down. I had to lay on the floor with the “stupid, oh my god I’m in pain, far away eyes” look for a good 30 seconds. My partner gratefully hauled me up, but I could barely stand.
I realized that if I kept moving a little bit my legs wouldn’t collapse, but in my head I was really kind of worried that I had done some kind of damage. My legs were literally shaking trying to hold me up. I couldn’t really do the move on my Uke and I definitely couldn’t do the move as the Uke. Teacher finally called the end of that exercise to which I was eternally grateful, but then he calls me over to demo the moves more fully to the class. “Oh s#!*” I thought to myself. “Can’t he see that I’m having troubles standing up?” I guess not.
So he expands on the two moves and then has me do a couple of attacks to the waist (wrestler grabs) so he can demonstrate what do with that. Thankfully I was mostly in a static position and not any splits.
End of night report – 10K mg of Ibuprofen and only a little stiff this morning.
At 6:05am I looked at my phone quizzically while trying to wake up. My SaBomNim (master teacher), who is legally blind, sent me the messa...
