Fight Night Recap

In an ironic follow up to last weeks post I blocked three whirling attacks, but neglected to keep up the pace for the next spinning backfist that ended up terminating on my brow.  Boooiiinggg. 

Class was relatively small with a new guy that comes from a Jujitsu school.  I’m not sure what his experience is, but he was pretty awesome with all the basics.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone move with their balance as well as him. 

In the second hour Teacher announced that we would spar since it’s been awhile.  This was met with a lot of excitement since we hadn’t done any since I was teaching the class in September.  Time flies and Teacher was most likely focusing on bringing the new students up to snuff. 

I got three fights which was pretty awesome.  My first was with the gal from the TKD background.  She was a bit intimidated due to the lack of pads and the requirement to check kicks and punches.  After we danced for a bit I started to get close and use my hands a lot which was not to her liking.  In an amusing turn she said, “get away from me!” and shoved me away followed by a brutal kick.  Hehe. 

The second fight was with Dave.  You never know what you’re going to get and this was no different.  He moved right through me which I was somewhat expecting, but he instantly got grabby and wanted to throw, but it was all sort of hasty and poorly executed.  Not to say that didn’t hurt when he contacted at a million miles an hour, but it’s safe to say that all I did was remain on the defense.  In our first exchange I got two knees to the groin and while I tried to back away he would attack further!  What a machine!  During one of those exchanges he got the spinning back fist in.  Ouch. 

The third fight was with our new guy.  I’ve never fought a Jiujitsu trained person and it was interesting to say the least.  I couldn’t close with him at all. And when we did it was on his dime.  I was able to stop his first takedown, but was never able to land a thing on him the whole time we ran around the room.  In the end he waited till I relaxed and took a leg into a throw.  Beautiful throw.  I hope he can teach us some of that stuff.   So fun.

The Place In Between

The struggle to push through the thin meniscus that separates the differences in consciousness is a mysterious purgatory in which I don’t have a lot of sensory input, but nor do I care about that loss either. 

During the push to wake myself up in the morning I may be at all sorts of levels of awareness, but not necessarily awake.    This state of apparent (or false) consciousness  is the closest thing I can equate to where I’m located when I receive a blow to front or back of my head. 

I would say, in a totally unscientific way, that it must be like a computer system coming on line.  Not every system is on at the same time – multiple services come on line in a consecutive fashion, often dictated by importance or the role of the system in it’s larger environment.  By extension the body possibly brings up functions in a similar fashion.  In my case vision and hearing come up last. 

I’m drawing these similarities because I notice that seasoned fighters (at least in MMA matches) appeared to have that knock on the head and still function.  It’s led me to spend some time thinking about the few minutes I’ve spent in that mode.   It must be that these fighters are so well trained that they continue to function without sight or sound.  At a preliminary glance that actually seems to be the case. 

Unfortunately for me, my training doesn’t embrace this at all (probably best considering it might come with a concussion) so my immediate response is to stand dumbly as my hands slowly lower.  I can’t help but wonder why I don’t fall down.  Is it innate balance?  I doubt it because I’m one the easiest guys to throw in class.  Or is it that the balance system is still on line when hearing and vision are no longer? 

__

Class last week was filled with innovative throws and one that took me over the leg of Dave didn’t allow me to get a good slap in ended up ringing my bell a bit and took me back to the place in between. 

A Little More Action, A Little Less Conversation

Teacher called me a little earlier in the day and asked me to teach a section on side kicks.  He’s been experiencing some tendonitis in his arms and has been struggling with plantar fasciitis off and on over the years.  So my responsibility was fairly low, but I thought about it all day and tried to get my thoughts organized for class. 

When the time came I thought I was rather thorough, but after class I thought I might have gone on a bit much.  I spent a good 20 minutes breaking the moves down and getting everyone to focus on the little things.  Ah well, it was nice entry into the move to encourage thinking about the dynamics.  Storm, the advance TKD kicker, brought up a conversation about putting a snap into a kick.  He can put that last 5% of the move into nice twitch that really snaps beautifully, but trying to get folks to recognize that is really difficult.  I finally told them that it was an advanced technique. 

After class I met with Teacher for some beers and he wants me to take over the class for January while goes out of the country.  So I’ll get more time in being the sensei.  Hopefully I won’t have to do the kids class; of course I didn’t think about it till today.

On Choking

I had Teacher around the neck in textbook choke when a pain shot through my arm.  The next thing I noticed was that I was laying face down on the mat. 

We had rare few folks show up last night due to the weather, so we got to work on some very advanced techniques.  Normally this either fun or painful or both.  It was more painful last night than fun, but it went quick. 

Any technique that requires that delicate balance point of action and thought is absolutely difficult to me.  I never realized I was such a strong rote learner as it relates to physical things.  So when we change around things and I start to think most of what I do is plain and fairly unimaginative.  This has a tendency to get me down pretty quick.  When I see the others really exercise their imagination I’m very impressed because I bring nothing to the fight.  I make the ideal Uke because of that quality. 

So the first hour and some we worked on all our techniques from the knees to borrow from some of our Aikido lineage.  This is something I don’t care for at all due to tender knees in the first place and then trying to take folks off their balance from that position means that I have to do the technique perfectly.  That’s the reminder that I’m not as good as I think.  I end up using muscle more than half the times I do the work.  Thankfully I got to work with Dave most of the night so we laughed a lot. 

The last part of class was devoted to escaping holds and chokes.  Teacher likes to utilize a multi-axial approach to escape.  The first point being that the escape needs to start before the lock is fully in place and synched down.  After that he’ll do a draw down on the choking arm with one hand and then with other he’ll work over pain points with the other.  These include the “funny bone”, small digit manipulation, knuckle strike to the back of the hand, and nerve roll on the forearm.  The last one hurts so acutely that  have to spastically try to get a way. 

After a half hour of that I could barely move my arm, my neck was red from gi-burn and fingers barely worked.   When the folks would exit the choke my fingers wouldn’t clear my body and end up getting bent backwards.  Not a fun night in the scope of pain management, but surprisingly educational.  This morning my arm feels heavy and sluggish. 

Sticks And Stones

I think I’ve used this title before, but it always seems appropriate after blocking kicks for a few hours. 

The essence of these classes being that the best block is not being there or, at the very least, stopping it before it comes to full fruition.   This is all and good, but I’m not Mr. Speedy so my ability to read a kick is really important. 

The ability to read anything is tremendously important of course, but the kick I have really bad problems with is the outside crescent (or the axe kick).  When the kick initiates it totally looks like a front snap kick and then I fall for the lower block and end wearing foot sunglasses. 

Last night we pretty much reviewed all the kicks and all the potential blocks at infinitum, but I had to admit my pleasure in that I was gaining in flexibility and control.  Normally, my back will let me know if I’m pushing it with it tail tell pull across the lumbar, but for whatever reason by the time we got to high, fast kicks my body was fairly ready to go.  However, I’m very sore today and getting fairly stiff as the day goes on.  Unfortunately, I’ve got legs day at the gym tonight.  Ugh.  

Tater–Crusher Of Children

I’m not of huge fan of kids in general, but I’ve gotten better with more exposure to them in class.  As a secondary instructor I do feel a little pride when they see me in town and say hi or I get told by parents how much I’m mentioned.  Ego massage is such a great binder. 

So last night I’m helping out Teacher with the kids.  While they do upper blocks I’m supposed to walk around doing chops to their heads to make sure they are doing things correctly.  In this case correct would be my downward strike being deflected. 

A few of the kids didn’t have quite enough of an angle so I’d do the strike and they’d end up bopping themselves on the head with their own fists.  I immediately felt guilty about that and wondered if they’d show up again for the next class.  I think I’m probably over-analyzing again. 

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In the regular class we barely had anyone show (10 seems small now!) and we focused on spinning kicks.  I don’t recall ever having a whole class working on variations and drills and it was great fun, but old age snuck on me when I wasn’t looking.

Dave, Trucker and me are all roughly 45 by a few months and we all have limitations physically.  Dave has rough knees and some flexibility issues, Trucker crushed a vertebrae and has constant back issues and then there’s me with my back and knees.  Thankfully, my knees have been coming along because I haven’t been running, but my back has been playing around with me. 

The exercise that started all this was the semi crescent block with one leg and then a jumping crescent with the other.  Great fun, but my back would “pull” a lot of the time with one side.  Very uncomfortable!  We switched out to a roundhouse that rotated to a hook-kick.  One out of ten felt dead on, but every poorly executed one sent electricity up my spine. 

After cooling down a bit at the end of class I could barely get my sweat pants on.  Dave said to me, “I wasn’t trying to be 20 again.”  Swine.

PPP

Piss Poor Posting

I've found it extremely hard to sit down and right about class for the last month, but tonight I'm pretty wound up and figured I spend a few minutes typing down some thoughts.

In the past few posts I've been focused on the new folks and how much they mean to our class.  But I should have mentioned that there is this feast of famine dynamic that plays itself out.  Consistency in numbers really helps everyone learn because we all build at relatively the same time.  Each time new folks come we have to start out at the basics again to bring them up to speed.  Since you don't know if they are going to stay you still have to go through the motions.  We all also know that reviewing the basics is really fantastic, but it makes for a boring class.  Teacher is fairly good at not letting that happen so I think we are relatively blessed in this capacity.

So tonight we had a family start.  Three folks obviously very tight and interested in something new.  However the Dad is probably around my age and this looks like it's going to be a challenge for him physically.  None of then looked too bad through most of the class so they might end up staying.  I'm more worried about the new gal, who's a blackbelt in TKD.  If she doesn't integrate she'll take off and that would be sad.  One of the nice things about her is that she is very attractive.  After grappling with Dave (sweaty man hugging) it's a real pleasure to work with her.  Plus she can kick like a mule.  So, of course, I ended up hugging with Dave all night.  Not that it's bad, but change is nice.  The truth of the matter is that we work great together and there is no ego between us.  It helps that we are the same age.

The new gal joined us as we addressed injuries tonight.  I was concerned about my back which had been acting up in the last week - so much so that I took Tuesday night off.  Of course with all the kicking we did tonight it hurts, but not in a bad way.  We'll see tomorrow.

New Blood V.2

I’ve long been a proponent of having new people come to class, but I really love  new folks that come and have a lot of experience.  We live on the outskirts of nowhere, on the edge of the world, but we have a highly transitional population and we occasionally get lucky.  Case in point – last week we had a new young guy who was incredible motivated and appeared very excited to be in class, but never showed up afterwards. 

This week we’ve had a new lady show up and she’s also from a TKD school.  She has her black belt and appears to be enjoying our class, but you can see the confusion in her face at times because of the difference in teaching styles.  I hope she stays because she brings in skill as well as having another lady in class.  Our only other one is Swimmer, but she’s in High School and her schedule keeps her away from class frequently. 

Elbow Strike to Face! (I was looking for an image of Confusion?!)

Judgment

I’m a bit behind in posting because work has become very busy as of late and when I have a moment to myself I forget that I want keep some memory of what’s happened in class. 

From last week -

Dave was worn to the bone.  He got a tip that there was some free firewood and he filled up his trailer and truck and still decided to come to class the same day.  While he yawned his way through class Teacher asked him about testing.  Dave said that he was ready to go, so Teacher asked if he could do the test that night.  He nodded his head wearily (I might be projecting…) and, boom, the test commenced during the 2nd hour. 

Teacher had everyone sit down, which is standard for his type of testing, but had Dave remain standing.  The additional surprise being that he had me remain standing as well.  I presumed that we’d start with sparring, but that was unusual because this was just Dave’s Green belt.  So Teacher had me join him at the head of the mat to help in testing.  To be specific he was actually using Dave’s test to educate me to the process. 

 Not Dave’s Test (but came up under image search for Martial Arts Test)

During the test he would periodically turn to ask me what was next.  To which he received my blank look.  I think I made it abundantly clear that I cannot remember what was on tests, thus my making everyone fight way before it was required. 

Poor Dave had to do a lot of waiting while Teacher and I mumbled together.  I actually apologized a few times because I just didn’t know what Teacher was asking.  Derp!

New Guy!

It’s probably not a reason to get really excited, but after hanging out with kids class, which seems to be sticking to the 23 member level, the adult class can be a bit of a let down.  We had 8 last night which is honestly a good number considered the space we have, but I honestly worry about us losing some of our numbers due to normal attrition. 

So I was pleasantly surprised that a new guy showed up last night.  On top of that he’s a young guy with a black belt in TKD!  It’s like a dream to have energy and experience come into the class. 

He’s a nice guy and was able to quickly learn whatever we were doing with a minimum of fuss.  Teacher was nice enough to place me with him for basic punching drills.  He was a bit shaky with our variation on it, but you could tell he knew what he was doing.  Later, during the break, he did flashy spinning kicks with Storm.  He’s certainly physically adept.  Every time they do that flashy stuff I become a bit mournful, because I’m older and not really sure I can generate the physically adept synchrony to do any of what they are trying.  I think I’m going to have to force myself to try some of it just to see if I can orient at high speed. 

Week In Review

I had to leave early last night due to a friend leaving town.  Since we are on an island a lot of folks take the long ferry ride back to the main land to continue their journeys.  Because the loading process is so cumbersome the time to say good bye can take a few hours.  If someone has some problems with saying goodbye the stretch of time can be anxiety provoking.  Case in point – last night our friend sprinted out the bar a full ten minutes before she had too.  Not good at good byes.

Class on the other hand was a lot of fun, but I was panting.  My glorious return to the gym has not occurred yet so I’m not getting any aerobic work in.  I had a cholesterol test the other day that confirmed my last couple of months of inactivity.  At least I’m under 200, but my ratio is just horrible.  I can’t wait to see Dr. Sausage-Fingers this year. 

The big highlight is that we’ve switched to evening hours and the kids class has restarted.  Since I’m still shy of being involved with all those kids I go in a bit late to help out.  This just means wondering the rows of children straightening shoulders and feet while Teacher explains and leads.  When I showed up on Tuesday there was 28 children!  That means that there is literally no room to move.  Teacher was just down to punches and stances and absolutely no kicking.   Crazy.  By Thursday the class had reduced to 22 which mean they could move forward and back three steps.  For the first time in 12 years he’s actually telling folks he doesn’t have room.  They are actually going to have to call in a month to see if there is space. 

Slideshow Update

For years I've only had a few photos from my first few years at class.  I just added a few of the most recent gang I've been working with.  What a cast of characters!

Teaching With Little Sleep

As I’ve mentioned before I occasionally have difficulty with getting to sleep for a couple of days, but exhaustion usually wins out and by the third night I’m all back to a normal.  I’m not sure what’s going on lately, but I’m on my fifth night in a row of disrupted sleep. 

What I feel like now.

Just like Tuesday Teacher had me run the class for the first hour while he slept in an attempt to catch up on jet lag and fight his cold.  I had kind of anticipated this and had a few ideas to work on before he showed up.  I’m somewhat fixated on working on things that I’ve been avoiding. Primarily I’ve been avoiding downward blocks to Roundhouse kicks.  We had once tried this and I got a hellacious goose-egg on my forearm that ended up taking weeks to heal.  I assume it was a monumental bone bruise.  Just like any injury anticipation of pain starts playing on technique and then I shy away or adjust incorrectly. 

So I worked on blocking roundhouses and ate bitter for awhile and was fairly surprised that I didn’t have massive bruises this morning.  Maybe tomorrow.

My second avoided technique is the spinning back kick.  Not something I’m particularly good at so I wanted to practice as much as as the class.  Bad idea.  No one was particularly good when we first started and I really needed to be paying attention to them.  Thankfully Teacher rolled in as was able to do that part while I stumbled around like a drunken sailor. 

As the class progressed I was supposed to act as the augmenting instructor, but if I wasn’t participating I was yawning enough to cause a vacuum.  The second hour seemed to drag a bit, but ended abruptly.  Teacher had me over for a couple of beers and asked how my time was while he was gone.  I tried to compile a quick list of lessons learned, but he mainly focused on how proud he was that I stood up and took control of the class for him.  Not too many times in my life has that occurred.  I went home and fell asleep immediately and then woke up at midnight.  The rest of the was light sleeping again, but I feel a bit more refreshed today.  We’ll see how long that lasts.  I’m supposed to going on a run with Dave.  Ugh.

Teacher Is Back!

I was leading the warm-ups as usual and had just got to the sit-ups and felt that tell-tale pull in my neck.  Figures – nothing like giving myself a tweaked neck before class has even started.  Duh!

Not me – I’m lumpier in real life.

Teacher had called me during the day and sounded horrible.  He’d picked up the flu or a bad cold during his travels and it was beating him up.  He asked me to run the first hour while he slept and then he’d come on down. 

He showed up while I was introducing distancing with the side kick.  Most of the time distance is closed in the side kick via a step behind towards the Uke.  In times of stress, like sparring, that step behind might not occur and it’s replacement is a shuffle.  So the rear foot replaces the front foot in position.  The trick is keeping your balance so you can still deliver a decent kick.  Easier said than done.

We spent the rest of the evening working on locks and throws.  The nice thing about having him back is that I can insert myself into the fun more, but I still had to instruct more often than not.  It’s tough trying to tell someone what they are doing wrong when your upside down. 

Classes 6 + 7

The Cherub and I were doing some light hand work and for whatever reason he decided to pull a technique out of one of our katas that ended up going through every bit of my defense and plowed into the flesh over my nose and between my eyes.  The unfortunate part of this being that he picked a spear hand.  Traditionally a really advanced technique because it’s coupled with a lot of hand conditioning we don’t do.  In reality if you pulled this technique you’d probably break all your fingers. 

So The Cherub tags me once right between the eyes and the blood starts.  Neither of us is aware that he’s cut me and somewhat concerned about his control I stop the action and asked him what he did.  He shows me hitting me in the same exact spot!  Gad. 

There’s actually cuts there – I swear!

The Cherub.  I imagine that he might come across odd to the average joe on the street.  He has pale skin this side of sour cream, fairly bright red hair and very thick glasses.  I think he’s around 15, but fairly physically advanced.  The reason he seems pretty cool to me is that we met his brothers early on and they seemed really odd.  Now that we have a new guy who has a lot of problems being socially appropriate (read: keeping his mouth closed) The Cherub is the model of the upstanding martial art student. 
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Tuesday went pretty well with another class of six folks.  At the end the Twins and Robot pulled me aside and said that Teacher had told them that there we also going to get tested in the upcoming month.  Based on that I figured that I needed to do another pre-test class (Thanks Uchi-Deschi!). 

So last night we had nine folks and after the first half hour I was going to move over to test prep when, to my vast surprise, in walks Teacher!  So I had to continue like he wasn’t there and constantly refer to him as if he wasn’t standing there.  Kind of funny most of the time.  “Well as you know Teacher like to see…”

He just got back to the states last night so he was totally off his schedule and still decided to come in.  Ironically The Cherub had been at work since 5am and Dave had just got in at 6am.  So a lot of sleepy faces in the crowd. 

The only thing that caught me eye was when we were doing the sparring and one of the twins really stood out as being unflappably brilliant in his hand work.  He would forget to use his feet, but still beautiful hand work. 

Classes 5 + 6

I’m having a hard time sitting down and typing for any period of time since I normally do these updates while I’m at work.  That’s what keeps the brevity most of the time.  For whatever reason work has picked up and so typing is broken in to a half sentence here and there.  Keeping to any kind of theme is really difficult.

I think I’ve mentioned that I like using an outline for class, but gave it up because of the dependence it was creating.  So for the last couple of classes I gave up on that and stuck with a loose two portion approach.  For instance, last night I went with a blocking drill that I changed twice and then had a nice flow going so we could get a focus on in-fighting. 

The second half of the class was split with kata and then throws.  As a rule TSD doesn’t really have throws, but due to our local school roots we have a few hip and trip throws. Both ideas came out of our last class where I learned an important teacher lesson.  Never put a exhausted guy back into sparring.  Also Never go into sparring with an exhausted guy when you are not up to speed.  Needless to say, I took some very hard lumps. 

The match started with a kick to my testicles.  After a rest break and restart I got behind Dave to which he immediately elbowed me way too hard and set me up for a throw.  We were locked up and I figured I’d just step around his leg. Wrong.  As soon as I moved my leg he took my balance and he threw me very hard.  I had a great landing, but we weren’t using pads.  He had to help me up.  Let’s just say I was unable to make the 90 second goal I had set for myself. 

Although it’s not a rule I would say that exhaustion also leads to horrible sparring.  The reason I took a shot to the testicles was that Dave was just throwing out random things instead of planning. 

So in class I wanted to work on hands in a tangle and various throws (on mats).  I introduced the class to the tomonagi and the idea of a sacrifice throw (you are going to the ground to do the throw).  After that we focused on throws based on driving one leg between your opponents legs. 

I have to say that I really like doing the class and I thought it went pretty smoothly.  Considering we only had 5 folks I tend to think that smaller classes are a bit more fun and easier to keep track of. 

Class 4

Or, “All by myself” <sung in a haunting way>. 

This would be my first completely solo class and I chose not to have an outline sitting by the front of the class.  I figured that it was creating a weird dependence in such a way that I couldn’t think outside the outline. 

I’d planned to have two to three sections of class with leg work first and then our version of scaled down Aikido next.  I was kind of taken by an idea suggested by Uchi Deshi when I asked him for some pointers.  He said that if there is a student getting ready for testing that he’ll run through the exam several times and fine tune anything that needs work.  Since we rarely know when Teacher is going to test this wouldn’t have worked out for us, but just before he left he told Dave that he would test him when he got back in September.  I thought the next couple of classes could have a little time on focusing on his test. 

So class started well and we blew past the hour mark while we were all into the kicking drills.  After class I was going to work on kata so Dave could get some practice on his test specific one.  I totally lost track of time after the break because we (I mean me) got engrossed in teaching hand grabs and locks.  We ended the class on a “run”, which is to say we have one person standing at the head of the class while each person attacks in line so the person at the head can practice technique. 

We never got to Dave, but we were close to running over and everyone had a good time and a good workout.  Dave and I reviewed some notes from class and decided that I might want to reduce the amount of techniques taught at one time.  Oops.  I guess not everyone can drink from the fire hose. 

Class 3

Not much to say other than that by the break I was pretty much running out of ideas. Thankfully Teacher showed up to save the day. I really thought my outline was going to keep me going all the way through, but I realized my fanatical attention to the clock is not helping me here. I started precisely on time and then spent a fairly long time on warm-ups. That left around 35 minutes of instruction before the break. “No problem,” I think. Well, I was wrong. I had about ten minutes worth after words.

Teacher had me do everything up to that point including opening up the dojang and turning on the lights. I led the bow in and he didn’t show up until we got near the break.

At the end of class he told the class while he was gone for the next month that they’d all get to participate in my education. Boy, was I thankful for that. Everyone is being extra nice, but I thought that was even better.

Class 2

Although not totally officially in charge of the whole thing I ran the complete class with Teacher periodically poking his head in at random times.  The class was very respectful and called me Sensei throughout and the little outline I made worked very nicely, but I really needed Teacher to fine tune it.  I was way too heavy on blocking and he had me modify a few parts. 

Frankly I was impressed that I was able to get through the whole class without boggling too much and over focus on too many things.  I think the trick will be getting through the first hour and having a segue way into the second.

During the break I showed Storm the easy break boards we’ve been using over the years as I had found out that he was a significant breaker when he was younger.  He loved the wall mounted makiwari we’ve got, but can’t use (it would trash the wall) and even gave it a go on the black board.  That is the one that we’ve only been able to break with an axe kick suspended on blocks.

  Not me.

Of course after he bruised his knuckles on it everyone else gave it a try even after I told them about the axe kick.  Ah youth, how I miss your unbridled enthusiasm.

Start Of Teaching

It's not like I haven't taught a class or two over the years, but I've never done it as a Sensei so this week was a little stressful in that I wanted to be better at instruction. I'm not very relaxed, and tend to get hyper focused on one student. In an effort to make a somewhat smooth transition to teaching full-time (only for the month of September) Teacher has had me take the first hour of class this last week to help me dial in a bit more before he takes off. The class has been incredibly receptive and supportive, but my imagination only goes so far.

I can do about 70 minutes worth of instruction, but my well of originality dries up pretty quick after that. Since I don't have the ability to make stuff up on the fly I use the "build on to the next thing" method. I pick a technique and break it down to the essential pieces and start the class on those and work up to the technique. Depending on the technique I'll add in partner work or focus drills with pads.

Teacher mainly just had me slow down and stop focusing on the new guy, but overall he liked what I had to say and how I did it. He gave me a few important hints about time eating drills and how they can fill in between times where I might need to think about what needs to come next. He also had me change content mid stream as I was kind of exhausting the one area (legs in this case) pretty hard.

So this week, while he's still here I'll do the whole class twice before he heads out.

One thing I hadn't counted on was that when you are teaching you don't get to do a lot of doing. I'm going to have to figure out how to do that because I felt like I was missing out on practice. Bummer.