December 29, 2006

Just Don’t Ask Me To Lift My Arms

If I told you that it was difficult to get out of bed this morning because my back hurts so badly, and if I told you that lifting my arms above elbow level hurts immensely, you would probably assume that I had a rough night at karate. 

You would be wrong.

The only thing rough about karate this week, was the fact that I am so insanely sore from playing the Wii.  How is that possible?  I am not in bad shape, but apparently the body motions required for playing Wii Sports are not ones that a body does on a regular basis and I am hurting proof of that.  Either that or I am just getting old.  I prefer the first reason.

I considered asking my instructor if we could do only things requiring feet and legs because my arms are seriously killing me.  However, being sore from playing a video game is not exactly an excuse I’d like to share with everyone at the dojo so I didn’t. 

At karate this week, it became apparent that I’m going to need to learn how to breathe properly through my kata’s.  Since I already know my material for 2nd kyu, I am working on learning the things I’ll need to know for 1st kyu.  Last week I worked on the second tunfa kata, Odo No Tunfa Ni.  This week I worked on learning Pinan Godan, which is the shortest kata ever.  The short thing is cool, but the breathing thing is not.  I asked the black belt who was teaching me Pinan Godan to help me with it, and what he said makes sense.  You breathe in your nose and you breathe out through your mouth.  I never got the whole breathing in your nose part, so I’d end up breathing out when there was not much to breathe out and would start feeling short of breath.  Then I’d start feeling light-headed and well, you try concentrating on doing kata when you’re feeling dizzy. 

Last night, my instructor let me videotape him doing all of the material for 1st kyu and I am psyched.  I love having them on video.  We burn them onto our Tivo and then I can practice whenever I want, which makes learning new material so much easier.  I wish I would have thought of doing this much earlier in my karate career.  Not only does it make learning kata a breeze, but it’s also fabulous blackmail material having your instructor on videotape (just kidding Mr. M!).  I told him last night that he just might end up on You Tube. 

I might also put up a video of Big I playing Wii Boxing.  She is fabulous and has yet to be beat!  She knocks out her opponents in the first round almost every single time.  Her technique is somewhat. . . haphazard and could probably really help some people.  It might also be worth a laugh or two. 

When I can lift my arms again, I’ll get right on it. 

  • Print
  • email
  • RSS
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • StumbleUpon
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn

No related posts.

Posted by on December 29, 2006 in Tales from the dojo | 7 Comments

Comments