Coughing

I've been fighting a cold for about two weeks now.  In of itself, it's not bad because I can still work (and work late), but not it seems to have settled in my lungs making me cough a wet sounding bark whenever I have slightly elevated breathing.

I've become somewhat concerned that I haven't been able to exercise regularly due to work and a change in the weather.  That means gaining weight is right around the corner.  So I went to class figuring I'd get a little sweat going and maybe jump start my health regimen.  

When I got to class I realized it was going to be a long night because it was only Teacher and myself for the first hour.  Most of that time was spent on talking, but every time we'd start doing something I'd end up coughing and hacking for a few minutes. By the time Dave showed up in the 2nd hour I was done.  

The good part to all this is that I finally went to the doctor for a nagging shoulder pain and it turns out that I have small rotator cuff tear or sprain.  It was good because I've dreading going to class because every little thing seems to make it hurt.  Class is the perfect place to exacerbate the whole thing especially since that's where I got it in the first place. In the end I avoided hurting myself further and went home and slept for 10 hours.

Today I'm at home avoiding a lot of stuff so I worked refining and completing Kong Sang Goon. Here's a really nice rendition:

Once I get mine refined I'll take a video and everyone can giggle at the poor comparison.  

Birthday Bash

Yesterday I turned 46.  As I've entered my 40's I haven't been entirely excited by the calendar and this year seemed a little more daunting than years before, but taking things into perspective I'm doing rather well.  

Previous to my Black belt test over a year and a half ago, I starting running with a classmate, Dave, so I wouldn't be winded during the testing.  In retrospect I probably started way to late and really didn't know what I was doing to get ready, but it started a trend that I've been keeping up.  After getting my knees to cooperate, I stuck with the treadmill during the winter and sloooowly added time to my runs.  In May I was able to run my first 5K race and I just did my second one last weekend.  I was able to shave off a minute which wasn't great, but wasn't bad either.  

This run was done at 43 degrees and in the rain.  So no matter how you dressed you were going to end up sweaty and cold at the same time.  Coupled with working exhausting hours for the last month and disrupted sleep I ended up getting sick Sunday night.  

Boom, it's now my birthday week and I had to skip working late to indulge in NyQuil so I could get ahead of my new cold.  Thankfully parts haven't come into work so I could actually relax for a few days. 

To celebrate his birthday, my old classmate Greyhound, came over from the big city to visit friends, come to class and participate in my big annual party.  Ironically, he's actually sicker than I am, but he wanted to see Teacher and see how class compared to his current school.  

We showed up last night sneezing, blowing snot and generally hacking germs all over the place.  But the best part was that it was a spontaneous home week.  The guy that broke my ankle came to class, The baker and Greyhound all being there gave class a very surreal feeling.  The baker hadn't been on the island for 7 years!  Ankle breaker hadn't been there for over 8!  The both had kids and respectable lives!  I'm sure using a lot of exclamation marks, but it was great.  We couldn't stop talking which is a sure sign we weren't working  hard enough.  

Once we got started the lightheadedness almost had me stopped a few times in the first hour.  After teacher got us through the basics we moved on the technique which thankfully seemed less strenuous.  

Great night of knife hand blocks to grab and then side kick.  Then we learned a new counter (apparently we learned it before, but I'd forgotten like Steven Seagal) to the step behind trip.  Rotate the body at the point of being taken to escape or force your opponent down.  Very cool and fun.  

Slept great knowing that I can still do this at 46.     

Night And Day

I was drifting off to sleep last week and my wife mumbled to me, "you need to go back to class."  Wait, what?

Living in the far North has a depreciating quality on my well-being.  On one hand you can have an incredible summer in which the sun never sets and you have such boundless energy that it never seems to end.  On the other you have a soul-sucking winter that never seems to end and the chance to see the light of day comes once every couple of weeks.  When the winter starts my mood becomes quite labile (mercurial maybe?).  I'll watch those Hallmark ads and burst into tears; I'll over-dramatize pretty much everything; I'll walk around the house in sweeping robes, with the back of hand on my forehead bemoaning my outcast fate.  

Okay, I don't do the last one, but I'm sure my wife gets pretty tired of stretches of depressed whining.  She noticed the correlation of beatings and me having having a relatively decent mood.  I'm still not sure I understand it myself, but I can actually tell the difference when I come home.  No matter how much of a shit class it might have been, I usually skip up the steps and sing mindless songs as I get ready for bed.  

So the winter hasn't even started and I haven't been crying too much over puppies and kitties on TV so my wife's comment caught me off guard.  It's true I've been dodging class for a bit, but I must have been outwardly showing the signs.  So with some sense of renewed vigor I went to class last night with a smile on my face.

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Class was creative and interesting.  Closing in on the other guy and working the legs in a variety of ways; heel shots to the other guy's calves, etc.  I was paired with Teacher the whole time which was fun, but I'm rue to throw him because I'm not as smooth and he's got aches and pains.  Then I get partnered with Cherub who fights every move.  I've told him that it's training for me and that at times he's going to need to let it happen so I know I'm doing something correct.  It's a tough concept for someone that fights everything.  

It was just four of us which depresses me to a degree.  The vitality of the adult class got bled off in the last year.  I would say that the class hits it's equilibrium at 15 members and then fails with more than that because it can't address the disparity in levels of experience and skill.   

I slept well and woke up reasonably easy which makes for a good day.

Speaking of Krav Maga

I went to a birthday party on Saturday.  

I love parties.  I am a social butterfly.  I love social lubricant.  However, I am old and careful, and dare I say, responsible.  I was on call last weekend and I have been called too often in the evening, so I took the high road and became the designated driver.  

This is a predicament for me.  If I'm not drinking I get a little fidgety and end up not really enjoying myself.  Luck found me and I became the bartender for the evening.  So I was able to drink by proxy, as it were.

Through the course of the evening I was able to meet a great deal of people, but I also saw them get blurrier and blurrier as time progressed.  One of the folks at the party was a guy from Israel fresh off six years with the IDF where he practiced Krav Maga the whole time.  

He noticed my costume with the gi top (I was dressed as zombie hunter and posted my resume on my back) and he obviously felt that simpatico that a lot of beer can bring on.  So for the next two hours he had to discuss his philosophy with me.  After the first 20 minutes I realized this was going to be agonizing  - no one was going to rescue me. The problem was the repetition of the stories.  Sometimes he would slip in a bit interesting info, but it was mostly the same thing over and over again.  

Barring the drunk babble, I was able to extract these similarities in practice to TSD:

- Always close in on your opponent.
- Shorter folks have an advantage.
- Strike at the knee, if the guy that can't walk he can't chase.
- Never, ever use your skills; unless you have no choice.
- You always have a choice.
- Every moment is a moment to reduce escalation.
- Every moment is a moment to get away.
- You can eat insult and take a punch, but if you main or kill it's forever on your head.
- If you get into a fight you take responsibility for you and your opponent.  
- Always treat your opponent as if they are an expert. 

It just dawned upon me that these are things we should be repeating in class once in awhile.  I'd say that the incident of conflict for anyone is pretty much nil, but it's nice to cover philosophy of practice once in awhile.
    

Falling Behind

I'm going to straight up admit it.  I've been avoiding class.  I'm not totally sure of my motivations, but I think I might just need a rest break. 

For awhile I've been trying to find reasons not to go and conveniently work has become so tiring and labor intensive that I working late and very stressed out.  So I text teacher about an hour before class and let him know I'm not coming. 

As I'm writing this I know part of the problem is that I'm trying to get ready for another race and my ability to focus on multiple things is totally limited.  I've also been gradually becoming self-conscious about my physique - not that I'm gaining weight; although that is an eternal struggle, but the loss of muscle tone.  Ever since I started running in some earnest I haven't had time to go to the gym.  I've been telling myself that the cardiovascular benefits are more important that throwing around weights, but I've spent so many years trying to be low-end body builder and fearing physical aging that I can't let it go easily. 

So I'll go to the gym and run on the treadmill, which doesn't seem to have the same training benefits as road running, and then I can lift some weights.  But three miles is still 30 minutes and then trying to do a workout is going to add all kinds of time I don't have.  A conundrum for me.  So beatings has been left behind because of all this and the dwindling time I have at home with my wife. 

My wife, in addition to a 40 hour plus job, as taken on two board presidencies so her downtime is extremely limited.  We knew it was going to be tough, but the reality is that she's exhausted most of the time and we don't get a lot of time together.  Mostly we talk about the day and then fantasize about our next vacation in December.  Sad.

So I practice my katas (hyungs) and make sure I'm flexible, but that's about it for this month.  After the race I'm going back to less running, on the treadmill, lifting the weights and then back to beatings more regularly.  Or so I'm telling myself.

So Angry!

I went to class thinking it was going to be Cherub and me again, but shortly into our warm-ups Dave showed up on his bicycle.  

Dave is going through a rather painful divorce and he's only in the preliminaries.  He still hasn't lost his sense of humor, but it often takes on shades of frustration - still hilarious though.  For instance at the end of class he gleefully clapped his hands and said in a high pitched voice, "oh boy, I get  to go home now!"

I gather we are one of his few respites.  

Class was mostly just basics for the first hour, but Teacher grabbed an elbow block out of Pinyon Sam Dan.  It's as if you have your hands on your hips in exasperation, but you twist your body to knock away punches and such.  This is great because in reality hands in pockets make this the perfect tool for a cheap punch from someone.  

For us, we knocked the punch to the inside and swept the arm up and over, then rotated our body and take the puncher down.  Easy and elegant, but Dave and spent a good 30 minutes making a mountain out of a mole hill.  That took a lot of refinement.  About one and ten was close to correct.  I'm starting to think that's my statistic.  

We finished up class with a sticky-hands exercise that supposed to be easy, but the tension in Dave was palpable. Instead of a relaxed, sophisticated feeling of touch Dave just used 100% of muscle to keep my hand out of the way.  After doing this for a few minutes I realized what was happening and described what we were supposed to be doing.  It was still hard for him to relax; he needs an outlet to burn off the tension.  

I finished up with Teacher and it was super fun in that it was relaxing challenging and still a bit of a work out.

Lumpy From The Throws

Teacher called me up and said, "do you remember how many were in the kids class last year on the first day?"

I said, "I think around 30.  I was pretty blown away."  

"It's going to be over 40 this year" he said with some enthusiasm and exasperation.  

There's no way he can fit that many kids into the space and he came to the same conclusion.  It looks like he's going to have to split the kids class which means it'll be 5 to 6, 6 to 7, and 7 - 9.  He'll be burned out within a month or to.  Too bad we can't use the area on more days a week.  It' certainly be a nice treat for all of us to come more than twice a week.  

The odd thing is that our adult class is pretty much down to just a few folks.  Last night it was Cherub and me.  So we had awesome private lessons, but for whatever reason we got into throws and that was kind of a bummer because he's a lot shorter than I am.  We both struggled with the fine points and at one point I tried to pull Cherub across my back.  Instead of an effortless throw it turned into an awkward 140lb pull.  Ugh.  My back is tired today, but not spasming, so I'm very pleased about that.

We also leaned how to do the counter to the throw.  As soon as the thrower grabs your arm, your free hand has to come around the chin and move the throwers head around.  I got it right about once out of ten times.  Not pleasant to have someone fall on you though.  When it goes right, the throw fails and the thrower has to rotate due to the "follow the head wherever it goes rule".  It has been done very accurately and quickly.  Tough to accomplish for us plodding artists.  

In the end I think the count was around 40 to 50 throws without being to rattled.  I slept pretty well.

Roundhouse Renewal

Teacher called me up yesterday afternoon and let me know that he had taken ill and might not be able to do the whole class.  This was ironic because I had just finished telling him that I'd made a poor choice of drinking all night in conjunction with my wife's birthday and was miserably hung over at work. 

So class wouldn't be the best of the best by both of our reckoning.  By the evening, and a big dose of ibuprofen, I was able to rally and get to class early and warm up.  The class only consisted of Cherub, Beard and myself so I didn't feel any pressure to be super awesome.  However focus was off due to the previous evening's activities.  Long story short, I ended up kicking Teacher in the crotch with a poorly controlled roundhouse kick.

Although that didn't make him particularly happy he also didn't get upset either, but it did move him to focus on my roundhouse kicks.  So, for the next 30 minutes we spent a lot of time retooling my roundhouse kick. 

For the last how ever many years I've been doing the roundhouse in such a way that I can place my toe anywhere I want it, but it delivers zero energy.  So the work began on creating the "whip".  As we do with certain strikes (shudo in this case) the effort begins at the shoulder, then elbow and then hand.  I literally crack the whip with my fingers being the point of contact.  The trick is being very relaxed until the moment of impact.

So to translate this to the kick I had to break each part of the kick down and make some rather large (at least in my mind) adjustments.  In the end the kick starts now from the shoulder twist, to a torso twist, leg in position and then finally whipping into the target.  Although that took a half hour to sort out I saw an immediate change in power transfer and the impact on the water dummy was pretty impressive.  

Teacher ended up leaving class early; looking rather horrible and I finished class with kata work.  Both of them are working on Sa Dan (number 7), but I don't feel totally confident telling them what to change.  I mostly focused on stance, and some other refinements. 

Flipping And Falling

Tonight we had our characteristically small class; just five of us.  This is actually optimal because it means that Teacher will work on more and more advanced technique which is a rarity when we have new folks.  Class will be dedicated to bringing them up to standard.

I missed last Thursday which sounded like a tragedy.  Dave took his first steps in falling and throwing.  I would have loved to have seen it, but he made some breakthroughs about how to run his body right for the fall.  This means a lot to me because I don't have a lot of people to throw in class unless Beard shows up.  He's dyed in the wool badass when it comes to throwing.  He's got a black belt in Judo and has had it for 20 years.  He can do the most amazing things falling through the sky. 

So Teacher says that we'll redo everything practiced on Thursday to really help Dave integrate what he learned.  I was stoked.  Another rarity for us.  Throwing has been relegated to the "maybe we'll practice it some day, but that's not really our technique".  

So they pulled out the pads and doubled them up, to which I laughed because the 1" mats really don't do too much to absorb shock and doubling them doesn't do much at all either.

And for the first time I was able to do decent throws after 8 plus years so I felt like a million bucks.  Teacher worked some excellent magic about foot  and hip placement and I was able to balance people on a hip!  To which I hollered "dancing with the stars!"  After which Cherub buried me into the floor with the completion of the throw.  Thankfully, I'm the best faller after Beard in the class.  

I'm currently sitting back and drinking some Rye to celebrate what I consider a momentous occasion. I took more falls in one night then I have ever taken before (I guess around 25) and only the last one was kind of crappy so I banged my knee up a bit, but I'm still jacked.

Buddha Brings The Pain

We periodically get new students and it's worth celebrating in my mind.  Their arrival always reminds me of the time I stepped through the doors and started this particular adventure.  Our class has had fairly low numbers as of late, but we picked up another young guy awhile back.  

The youth class is good up to certain point, but Teacher will pull from that group once the kids are either too big or so sophisticated that they might quit from boredom.  In this case while the kids class is on hiatus for the summer Teacher invited an interested youth to join the adult class.  Buddha has the most placid features I have ever seen.  His expression rarely changes and his eyelids seem to be always at half mast.  He looks exactly like pictures of the buddha at his most serene.  

Since I'm usually silly I can get him to crack a smile once in awhile.  He's very nice, but doesn't talk much.  

So last week Teacher decides to work on pressure points.  This is incredibly interesting and, like other esoteric techniques, takes a lot of practice to get right on various people.  Unfortunately, we don't practice these very often. 

In this class we focused heavily on points around the face, head and neck.  While I practiced with other adults Teacher stayed in the corner with Buddha and concentrated on doing a few techniques really well.

Since Buddha is about 10 or 12 he has a few friends that watch the class the sidelines and occasionally giggle about the inherent silliness of it all. Near the end of class Teacher pulls me over to the door and has me pick up Buddha by the lapels of his gi.  I've got him off the floor and he applies a mastoid realignment that almost had me urinate by accident.  Needless to say he was dropped post haste to the delight of his friends.  I wiped away a manly tear and turned to Teacher who beamed at the new, quick learning student.

 
 

Just Move

Although this didn't necessarily come up during the last class it has been sticking around in the back of my head since last week.  Teacher noticed that during some of the structured one-step and two-step practice that I had a tendency to freeze for moment while I thought of the technique I wanted to use.  The more I thought, the slower I got on response time.  


So he told me this story:
"When I was teaching ballroom dancing to a room of 100 people I would run into the occasional moment where I couldn't remember what I had just been talking about.  So I would just start talking about something until I could remember where I was - just a space filler.  After I while I realized I just needed to move and things would just flow."


So I took this info and did what he said.  In the next exchange I didn't think ahead and just let myself do something.  To my surprise I was able to move smoothly and definitely.  How often do I forget that I have all the base work inculcated and had it for years?  Now it's just trusting myself to let it out, and to do that I just have to move.  So easy, but so hard to come to terms with.


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On Tuesday's Class we had our old compadre, Dave, show up after a couple of months off.  I had thought he had moved away, but he's going through a brutal divorce which makes him unpredictable and tense at times.  I think class is one of his only physical outlets.  I hate sparring with him because I get pummeled due to his lack of restraint.  You can see the frustration and anger pouring out of him.  Probably the most realistic fighting we have in the class.  


Teacher pulled out a cane and some Escrima sticks and then the beatings began!  My reedy, pipe cleaner arms hate anything to do with sticks.  I don't wear those bruises with pride because after the first block I'm mostly controlling a spastic relax that goes with the anticipation of pain.   Not very martially arty.  


Unfortunately, I was partnered with Beard and the cane.  That stupid handle is perfect for catching and twisting with unparalleled discomfort.  I'm not sure I'll remember the techniques as it's a rare thing that we bring them out, but I was able to get a few under my belt and blinding pain is great to help recall a few things.  
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Last note - Teacher pointed out that my open hand strikes were actually contacting in the wrong place.  I was making contact just under the meaty part of the palm instead of the meaty part itself.  

Boost Of Confidence

The basic structure of the class starts with a bow in and then we do a 15 minute warm up led by yours truly. Usually before the bow in I try to warm up and pre-stretch so the actually warm up isn't too much of a shock to the system.  During the warm up one of the things we do is practice balance with our eyes closed.  We have to stand on one foot and count to ten.


If there is any time in your life that you feel great about yourself I strongly encourage you to do this to completely remove that silly notion.  Some days I have wonderful balance on one foot, but never both and ten seconds usually is the max anyway.


Teacher was watching from the side during the warm up and pointedly focused on trying to get us a little better balanced once class started.  Obviously regular practice is going to be key for us, but he was trying to give some hints to make it better.  He had us adjust our feet, changed position, moves hands, etc.  By the time we'd been working on it for around ten minutes my legs were shaking so bad, any balance was out of question.  Teacher had the discretion not to roll his eyes too much.


So the confidence was pretty low at that point.  Thankfully he moved on, but it was still eyes closed stuff.  We partnered and made contact with our partner and then have them strike twice.  The deal was that if you placed the blocked shot in the proper place, you end up dictating where the next shot is coming from.   For example if I drag a blocked hand down and across so the next shot from the other guy would punch high (face) and so on.  


That part of class worked out pretty well.  There was no occasional thud of fist to flesh so our small group was doing very well as it relates to distance and use of power.  


We took a break then rotated partners which left me with Teacher.  Since I'm supposedly better than some, Teacher always gears up whatever lesson we've been working on.  I often feel like I'm struggling to understand whatever he's imparting to me and then I struggle to recreate without looking too foolish. 


His variation on the exercise was to have returned strikes after the blocks.  Mind you, this is with eyes closed.  The first few exchanges made me very nervous since I didn't think I could get the distance so I punched really carefully and very far away.  When he took his turn I could relax because he has zero problem landing a shot directly on my chin without any problem.  By that I mean it's perfectly placed and absolutely controlled.  

He obviously noticed my discomfort with the distance thing and had me close my eyes and grabbed my wrist.  He then would call out a body part and have me touch it (all with my eyes closed!) and I was able to do it without any problem!  


So with confidence restored with tried the exercise again and I was able to lay a fist on him with proper control 95% of the time.  Unfortunately, I smacked him in the face a couple of time due an either fantastically place shudo or poorly placed semi-roundhouse.  No blood though.


We finished up class with a small sparring session.  Little Sister was in town from college so we got to go first.  The moment of note was when we did a simultaneous spinning back kick that ended up locking our legs together.  We got great laughs as we hopped in syncopation, trying to extricate ourselves without losing balance and not opening ourselves up to another shot.


I came home thinking I was super ultimate man.  Yeah beatings!

Sluggish

I haven’t been feeling particularly healthy as of late so I end up going to the doctor for an unrelated reason (to remove a cyst on my head) and totally forget to tell the doctor.  Derp!

Anyway, I’ve been looking for excuses to avoid going to class so I can go to bed early, but I need the exercise so badly I decided I better go tonight and sweat a bit.  It’s not that I’ve been not working out it just feels like my relative progress is modest at best.  It feels like I’ve got a potbelly and that I have to outrun the damn thing. 

For instance I could run a 5k pretty regularly in May and now I struggle with 2.5 miles.  I know it’s not far off distance wise, but I’m barely making it. 

My lousy diet is mostly the cause, but living clean this week has made no change in how I feel.  Mostly tired, a constant headache, some lethargy, but not so bad that I don’t exercise some. 

Anyway, class was supposed to have a visitor, which I absolutely love, but the dude never showed up.  We ended up working on long punches and then working them into technique and then added a throw at the end of the technique.  Kind of fun and the class flew by.  So good exercise, but I still had an ice cream bar before class.  Damn ice cream!

Unfocused Goal

We are continuing to have a small number of folks in class which is really fine, but my attention deficit would like a little more variety at times.  The two new kids are usually placed together to work on basic skills while the three of us more experienced folks are placed together for some advanced technique.  A lot of what Teacher has us focus on is really stealing balance and a focus on technique.  In my case I frequently miss the technique and immediately exert muscle.  To any of the experienced folks out there you'll recognize the fault in that.  


The move we worked on was a block to the inside that terminated in an elbow strike to the liver.  From there the blocked are was elbow locked against my chest/stomach and then we can move the uke anywhere pretty easily.  


Well, for me that didn't ever want to go correctly.  After some time focusing on the micro, I realized it was a macro problem.  For others these moves are easily managed, but if I don't picture what I'm going to be doing with uke then the move falls apart.  I have been focusing on doing the technique only and now I'm at the point that I need to know what I'm doing from beginning to end.  


Another problem I've been experiencing is that I have no sense of when I'm making folks hurt.  With the plethora of really flexible students with little or no pain response I get very sloppy.  So I got partnered with Beard and apparently I reefed way too hard on his elbow (during the aforementioned technique), so when he gets a turn he cranked on me hard enough to make sure I was hurting this morning.  I really would have been okay if he just told me - ah well.  

Little S!*@%

It happens every couple of years in class.  We get a new person or someone in the class develops in a way that absolutely grates on my nerves.  It's happened again with one of the younger students - Cherub.  


Cherub was one of our younger fellows in the adult class who totally fit the mold that folks are starting to identify with martial arts classes.  He's home-schooled, fairly intelligent, self motivated, but has no association with group sports.  


Over the last couple of years he's become very good at technique and has an unquenchable desire to learn.  He's an absolute sponge.  However, he wants to practice advanced technique as much as possible, but that comes with the annoyance of him grabbing me and doing the technique poorly and painfully.  


This in it of itself isn't horrible, but last night he was just unstoppable and every new attempt was even more painful.  He was literally getting on my last nerve.  By the end of class I could barely move my hands.  


I thought about it some and came to this realization,  he has the highest pain tolerance I've ever seen and therefore has absolutely no empathy when it comes to locks and grabs.  You can see it in his eye when he does a technique way too hard  - just absent of any kind of connection.  Then he laughs because he's unaffected in kind.  


After that much torture I was able to sleep extremely well.  I turned out the light at 9.  That's a rarity.    

Quick Note

Quick news post.

We had a gal from the kids class move up to our class.

We only had four folks not including teacher.  Makes for intense lessons, but makes me sad.

Those intense lessons are intense.  I had my neck cranked around about one too many times.  However, my knowledge and usage is getting better around balance stealing and recognizing my desire to escape close in fighting.  It's terrible around shorter people - with good reason.  They hurt.

Hurried Catch Up

To those of you who follow this blog it's no surprise that I've fallen behind on posts.  I honestly haven't had too much to write about, but I got kind of beat up in class last night and there is never a bad time to post bruise pictures.

To be forearmed is to be forewarned

I don't remember getting mauled like for several years now.  There was point where I was bruising all the time, but that eventually went away around the time I finished up my green belt.  The other strange thing is that these are red.  Who ever heard of red bruises?  The barely seen one on my hand is actually the aubergine of a nice one developing.   

If anyone ever did a development curve of the stages of martial skill acquisition I'd be the first person to help out with the name of the various stages.   I know that around the green belt the repetition of basics was mind numbing; the endless plateau of never feeling like you are learning stuff, but knowing that you'll pick things up in the end.

Then there's this point where I learn something new and it puts all my basic learning into a new light.  This happens periodically; usually when I develop an insight in some move or technique.  The end result is that I feel like a beginner again, but one that can do everything moderately well.

What I'm trying to say is that I've been a Black Belt for awhile and I feel like I'm experiencing both of those stages at once.  Everything is repetitious, but I also see it in a new light which ends up making me feel like I'm starting over again.  Is there some point where you feel like you have mastery?  Or, at least, less incompetence?
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Since the class has been small, as of late Teacher has been focusing on really complex technique which is challenging to us all, but fun and intellectually gripping.  

Fred Flintstone Feet

There is a little known affliction of martial artists from hard style schools – it’s called Fred Flintstone Feet.  Most of them have experienced it one time or the other, but didn’t realize that it had a diagnosis. 

We had a personal record of cases last night; four in total.  Trucker is still recovering from a broken toe, Teacher broke or dislocated his pinkie toe in the first 10 minutes of class coming off the ground and catching on his pants. 

I smashed three toes into Truckers shin and later had a kick or fall on to my other foot.  And then later Dave through me over his leg, but had trapped my slap hand so my elbow and all 200 pounds of me when straight down on his foot.  I could tell by the his face that that was going to leave a mark. 

Teacher called me today to commiserate about his toe (completely black today) and I related my rather disrupted sleep due to pulsating feet and general sensitivity.  Strangely, none of us complained about any other pains in our bodies when the toes are mangled. 

Teacher has occasionally added a touch of reality based fun stuff to our classes.  This is based on his tireless collection of altercations in our towns small number of bars.  Some he’s heard about from the players, some are from what he’s witnessed and some of them are from things he’s participated in. 

A few weeks ago the bar near where we hold classes had a fairly epic brouhaha.  Eight fellows from a boat took umbrage to something the bouncer said and it was on.  Unfortunately there was only three bouncers.  Said altercation led to one of the bouncers on the floor on all fours while his opponent took an impressive kick right to his face; rearranging his nose at an unfortunate angle. 

So our exercise was to start off on all fours and see what we could do before he showed us a few neat ideas.  Basically, we needed to remember to get one hand up at the very least.  Moving is awesome of course, but we managed to plant an inside hammer block/strike or a punch down strike/block.  If done with good timing and power the kicker is spun so that their back is to you and then they are sad. 

Great class, but throbbing leading to FFF syndrome is nothing to laugh at; unless it’s the other guy.   

In other news

I thought I’d depart from the normal “dear diary” format of the blog to mention that I had a small fitness milestone yesterday.  I ran in my first 5K and finished in 30 min and 27 seconds.  My normal practice runs are around 33 minutes so this was quite nice for me. 

I’ve never been in a mass start before and I was incredibly disheartened when all the people surged ahead of me within the first few minutes.  However, my pace being what it is (slow and even) I ended up picking off a multitude of people as the course progressed. Mostly these were elderly folks or parents with small children, but I’ll take victories where I can.  The last half mile saw me upping my pace and then sprinting to the line.  I only did this because a morbidly obese women kept passing me repeatedly.  That kind of stung. 

Elbowski

Of all the deadly things we have in our arsenal of weapons the elbow seems so underrated in Tang Soo Do.  I should clarify.  In our forms we use it quite frequently, but it just doesn’t seem to be used to much in one step sparring.  I can’t help but think this is because it’s a weapon of infighting and brutality for the most part and the majority of the one step drills favor an arms length or legs length distance. 

So when Teacher starts encouraging it’s use during drills we start taking notice.  Dave, in particular, loves using it whenever he gets close and has caused me some pains over the last year because of that. 

As I mentioned we’ve always viewed it as a blunt force object, but Teacher has started stressing that like all other parts of ourselves that we use, the elbow can be used as a sophisticated weapon.  Last night we elaborated on a technique we started on Tuesday. 

The original exercise is to close in while blocking roundhouse punches (think redneck fighting).  Those punches from the side are met with an elbow slightly under the bicep.  The elbow swings in an upward loop that carries the punch over your head.  Bob’s your uncle – you can punch at the liver and kidneys at your leisure.  The more advanced technique was to choke out the guy with his own arm.   Fun, but the other guy had to be shorter or it turned into a greco-roman wrestling match. 

Last night’s variation - there was no blocking before the elbow interaction.  The dependent factor being that you had to have exquisite timing to pick off that arm and move it over your head.  Needless to say, we all got a lot of elbows in the biceps and forearms.  No one looked particularly happy at the end of the night, but we were all smiling.  Bunch of sickos.