Training Log Update

I'm currently on vacation and the heat is unbelievable! I don't recall this kind of heat - ever. Of course where I'm coming from, at a full third of what I'm experiencing doesn't lead me to making the best decisions as it comes to the out of doors.

The first day I got here I figured I'd better get out and run. I think it was in the high 80s and by the time I got back I thought I might be near a stroke. I stayed in a cold shower for as long as I can handle it and still didn't stop sweating for another couple of hours.

The next day I accompanied my Father to his gym figuring the temperature would be a lot better and used the fancy treadmill to set up an interval training run. This worked successfully and I was able to get two miles in, but didn't push my anaerobic threshold too much. Some light weights and I was good to go. However, during the each uphill interval I silently cursed Dave and my PT for this type of exercise. I imagine I should have been doing it years ago, but to have it rubbed in my face and be so bad at it makes me have to direct that frustration somewhere.

Test Training Log: I Hate Dave

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.

A Miss and A Hit

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.

Struggling wit the awesome.

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!

Test Info and Notes

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! 

Kata Progress And Notes

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. 

Post Vacation Shake Down

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. 

Oh Snap!

Teacher says, "you're going to freak out."

"About what", I reply.

He says, " I want to talk about your next test".

Ironically that's exactly what I wanted to talk about when he asked me to hang out after class for a beer. Although I wasn't really thinking he was going to bring this up. Recently I'd been kind of wondering what was next in the chute. We don't have a formal system of how to determine belt testing so I'd kind of thought maybe I needed to ask what kind of horrible things he had in store for me for my next rank. Only there was a rub.

"I wanted to let you know that I want to test you for your black belt" he said rather straight forwardly.

Internally the hyper ventilating hit a seismic pace. Externally my pupils dilated and I just sputtered. I actually said, "I don't know what to say," which is pretty much what all the cool guys say when faced with an epic life experience. I will say this, I never for a moment said, or even thought, I don't deserve this. In retrospect I kept thinking to myself that I'm not ready for this, but he brought up some very important points.

He said, "it's been 8 years."

He said, "maybe I've been too demanding with my requirements for this." With which I don't agree, but I was still stuttering.

I was going to be a one in a thousand!!!

I think the gist was that he may have thought I might have been good to go earlier, but was coming to terms with a couple of things in his own martial development and realized that I was, indeed, qualified in my own, weird way.

Here's the test:

- beatings

- construct my own kata

Deceptively simple with a ghastly undertone. The beatings will be multiple and exhausting. By this I mean that I will have to have the cardiac fitness to survive the black belts in town and still look like I was conscious about my choices in sparring. Woof! After that I'll have to do a kata (or maybe before, you never know) of my own device. I need to be sure that I make it worthwhile and highlight moves that I'm good at. Dang. This is going to be tough.

---

Class tonight was awesome. Strangely it started with katas/hyungs. He made us do them at a very slow rate which focused us on the balance and movement. It's not like we hadn't done this before, but today it sunk in kind of deep. Segue ways aren't just a ham-handed conversation migration, they are a way to move from stance to stance.

The second hour was pretty much all fights. We started with the slowest combat analysis and moved on to sparring. I don't think I've seen so many interesting conflicts. Me and Trucker went around for five minutes and I really didn't do a great job, but I was pleased with my ability to make the choices I did. Nothing unplanned. He still rolled me in the end which was met with great delight by the crowds. Oh to be a gladiator.

My second match was with Teacher and it went surprisingly well. In the end I realized I couldn't do anything substantive and went in for a bad trip/bear hug and fell on him. He managed to turn me on the way down and I absorbed the impact for both of us. Ooff. End of class!

Honestly, I don't think I'd ever seen so many great matches. He let us choose who we wanted to spar and in a way it was pretty awesome. The two youngest kids put up an epic fight. I was surprised that there was no blood. Were we showing control? Shocking!!

Catch Up

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.  

Feet, Don’t Fail Me!

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. 
---
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.

Shame

I knew, in those microseconds before, during and after my fist making a sickening crunch, that we had gone too far. 
----
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!

Revelations

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:

Super Awesome Horribleness

---

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.

On Thinking And Being

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. 

---

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!

Backfist To The Dome

I don't know about the folks out there, but there is a couple of moves that have an automatic follow-up move. The one I see most (and also do myself) is a side kick that's followed up with a spinning back fist. We do it so often that when we are sparring we almost automatically raise our arm to block when someone even hints at doing a move after a failed side kick.

That being said, during the evening's sparring I neglected to raise my hand to block since I figured two things; 1. that my opponent was too far away and 2. he could control his strike. I was wrong on both accounts. Dave is my height but must have slightly longer arms. So the back fist did come and I did not have my hand up. Dave also did not have the control I would have liked to see. This led to a perfect placement of his two knuckles on my side of my head at the hat line.

I had to shake that off but I swear I could feel the fluid filling the new dent in my dome. Before I went to sleep I looked into the mirror hoping that I would have a nice bruise the next morning. Unfortunately just a little headache and nothing to show for it.
---
Class had a total of three students last night. This is a classic dilemma for our town. We rarely have sunshine, but we've had it for 3 days in a row and that means we'll lose class numbers fast. So Dave, Ken and me practiced two step sparring and regular sparring for two hours. Super fun, but tiring. Teacher broke it up a bit by having us do something along the lines of an Aikido exercise. Uke strikes and we block and take the hand. At the same time we turn fully to capture and allow Uke to keep moving (and helping him) and then set up a wrist lock for a throw. This is usually the Kotegoeshi (wrist twist), but with our variation.

In the few Aikido classes I've been in the move is usually performed with the Uke at arms length so he can't punch you. Whereas we keep Uke close to us and use an elbow in the face to "soften" him. It give us a lot of power, but it keeps Uke close so if the move isn't done well then you get bashed.

Teacher then had us move to practicing blocks and grabs at real speed. This is something I don't feel I do particularly well, but this practice was excellent and I was able to move reasonably well and get a few positive grips and move into a serviceable lock.

Las Manos de Piedra y Sangre

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.
----

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.

Lucky Wishbone

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. 

Kick And Falls

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). 

Overcoming Exhaustion

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. 
---

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. 

Knife Hand Strike

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.

Creaky

I'm not too stiff this morning and my back didn't seize up on me so I'm viewing my return to class as somewhat triumphant.

It's been 3 months or so since I've been to class in any formal fashion so last night was pretty important to me in a couple of ways. I wasn't sure how much I could do because I've developed an unwanted, but needed, hyper-vigilence when it comes to my back. Every little bend and twist has me wondering if I've gone to far and a question of will I paying for it later. I was also testing the waters about how much I wanted to be there. I sometimes struggle with the desire to be there versus the requirement to be there. I only want to go because I want to not because I think I have to. I was pretty stoked to be back and leading the warm ups was like getting back on my favorite bicycle, so I think that answered that.

The big surprise last night was the floor. During the month of time off (while Sensei was away) the owner of the space covered our worse for wear carpeted floor with an interlocking heavy rubber floor that doesn't go to the edges. We share space with an aerobics/kickboxing/Zumba school and we are only renters. The floor is nice but difficult to run bare feet across. The tend to stick so the normal feet always on the ground movements turn into a tripping, halting, squeaking ordeal. As Sensei pointed out - probably a realistic situation for us. You could definitely liken it to wearing tennis shoes on a non-stick floor. I led warm ups. As simple as that seemed I'd felt a little out of sorts with what I couldn't do. All the extreme stretches are gone and now filled with gentle, back friendly positions. Even though I know in my mind I'm really helping myself out I can't but feel a bit cheated because we don't have the really hard stuff to endure. What's become of me? I want the bitter now?!

Class consisted of the basics and I was warn out almost immediately. The combination of the time of the class and the length of the class rocked me. I'd been going to bed for the last three months roughly the time class was starting. And when I work out independently I rarely go beyond 50 minutes. I obviously have some catching up to do.

Come Back Kid

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. 

---

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.