July 27, 2006

No Pain, No Gain

There is not enough ice in the state of Alaska to help with the pain I’m having right now.  I attended my regular intermediate class and then decided to stay for the advanced class this week.  I’m going to start doing this every week; but between now and next week I am going to eat about four tons of ice cream, french fries, and probably some straight lard in an effort to gain some damn weight in my forearms already.  I have NO padding there.  None. Zilch. Zippo. 

I have always had skinny, spaghetti-like arms.  My upper arms actually have some muscle.  You can’t carry around a 9-month old 14 hours a day without getting some muscle development, but the forearms. . . oh, my poor pathetic skinny forearms.  The great thing about this is that the pain in my knee from standing in nai hanchi for what felt like an eternity while our instructor "froze" us and went around correcting stances and arm placement, is barely noticeable in relation to the pain in my arms.  In fact, typing this now is sort of painful. 

Tonight the advanced class was me and a new black belt.  He’s a tall thin teenager, and he’s very good.  We were working on the waza (small series of moves) I need for 3rd kyu.  It goes something like this: step back and augment block.  With the other arm, you do this block where you bring your arm up so that your hand goes back to your ear.  It’s sort of like the old time models would stand, with one bent arm up behind your head.  It’s a block that works equally well on straight punches and hook punches.  Then the arm that blocked in the first move does a four-knuckle punch to the neck and then you step back and clear.  So, the black belt and I stood facing each other and took turns throwing punches at each other and working out the moves of the waza.  My arms endured the impact from at least 40 blocks.

I am going to wake up tomorrow with black and blue forearms.  They hurt so badly from the impact of his arms blocking my punches.  Pain, I tell you.  Pain. 

(In one of the kata’s I have to learn for brown belt, there is what we call a "clear and spear".  Your left arm clears the area, and your right hand juts straight forward in a spearing motion.  For purposes of the kata, the spear is aimed at the solar plexus.  In reality, you would aim it somewhere a little more vulnerable, but it wasn’t always like that.  Our instructor told us about how a long time ago, those training in the martial arts would line up jars.  One would contain sand, another pebbles, another larger pebbles.  Martial artists would do this spearing move directly into the jars to toughen up their hands.  When their spear hit you after they had advanced to the bigger pebbles, solar plexus or wherever, it did some serious damage.  Of course, our instructor said, when they reached older ages, they had claws for hands so we don’t do this anymore.  Maybe they had the right idea though.  Maybe continued impact on those skinny forearms of mine would do some good.  I’m hoping something good comes out of the discomfort I’m feeling now.) 

Before we started this drill, our instructor was demonstrating the rotation that needs to be on the blocks and had me throw some punches at him.  He blocked and my whole hand went sort of numb and got all tingly.  "See that," he said, as I felt like my whole arm was vibrating.  Oh yeah, I felt it.  Trust me.  I’m still feeling it now, hours later.  He went on to say how quickly a street fight could be ended if you block like that.  Your attacker isn’t going to be able to feel his hands, and the pain from getting hit in the forearm like that is mind-numbing.  Your attacker might just sit down on the sidewalk and start sucking his thumb.  If I were a thumb-sucker, I think I might have tonight.   I may have made a pathetic whiny "ow" sound. . . O.k. I admit it.  I did.

Despite the pain, the wonderful thing is that I know my waza like I have never known a waza before.  I’ve got one of the 8,000 things I need for black belt down.  That feels good even if my arms don’t.

During the intermediate class, I asked my instructor if we could work on some self-defense.  In particular, the self-defense that went so very wrong last week during at home practice with my husband.  Our instructor happily agreed (This is a different instructor than I had last week for the original lesson.).  He asked me what the problem was and I demonstrated what had happened. 

So, I acted as the attacker.  He took everything very slow, until the part where I screwed up at home.  One second I was vertical.  The next?  I had hit the ground on the side of my arm.  I never saw it coming.  There was an audible gasp in the dojo as the other students and myself were in awe.  I quickly scrambled to my feet, (once I had figured out what happened) and implored him to "TEACH ME HOW TO DO THAT." 

My instructor paired Big I with another Mom tonight, and I got to work with a teenager who is about my height.  I put her down; she put me down.  It was awesome. 

Tonight, after the girls went to bed. . . I practiced my new moves on my husband.  With his arm twisted behind his back he said, "But what if I started to do this," and he tried to twist out of having his arm held behind his back with his little spinning move from last week.  I already had the joint lock, but I lifted it up and instead of continuing with the spin, his head bowed.  There was some creaking and cracking and the good news is that it wasn’t me for a change.  He remained contained.

I learned something very important tonight in class.  If I’m going to put someone on the ground after getting out of a rear double wrist grab, then I might as well make it as unpleasant for them as possible.  You don’t need to wrap your arm around their neck and pull them back.  You can grab hair, ears, collars, or even eye sockets if you really want to do some damage.  Of course, you don’t practice these nasty things for real.  You could hurt someone; but if someone is a true attacker, then all bets are off.

While working on the self defense, I watched Big I with her partner.  She did so much better working with someone other than her Mommy.  She was grinning ear to ear as she grabbed the collar of the other woman and kicked out her leg and put her on the ground.  She did so well.  I am so proud of how she worked at it tonight. 

Every night when we put her to bed we read a bedtime story and then we "talk."  This talking usually consists of three questions.  The three questions are usually things like:  How do they make light bulbs?  How do they make shoes?  Why does the moon move? etc.  Tonight?  She asked me how to do a move in her kata.  I could hardly contain my excitement!  So, lying in her bed beside her I told her we were going to do some horizontal kata.  It was actually really fun.  Our bow was a crunch, and it was obvious if we were doing side blocks right or not because they would hit the bed if they were right.  We got to the move she wanted to know and went over it several times.  Then she sat up and demonstrated how it would look vertically.  She even made a mean face when she did it.  The pride, the pride.  I’m swelling with it. . .

Or maybe that’s just my arms.

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Posted by on July 27, 2006 in Tales from the dojo | 5 Comments

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