September 8, 2006

Nunchaku, you are DEAD to me

Last week, I made peace with nunchaku. This week, nunchaku decided our agreement was a bunch of crap and bonked me on the head. I thought we had an understanding, nunchaku! I did, however, learn an important lesson tonight (besides the fact that foam nunchaku is a very good thing). When you are using nunchaku, you must commit to a move and not change it, even if the move is wrong. When you are thinking that you’re going to catch the nunchaku behind your back, and then you see your instructor catch it in front of his chest, DO NOT try to change your motion mid-move. If you change your motion, you will have a very rude awakening. If you’re using wooden nunchaku. . . well, the thought of that alone makes me want to cry. Needless to say, I’ll be sticking with the foam nunchaku until I know the moves really well.

It’s a very good thing that I am able to laugh at myself. There are not too many people in the dojo who you hear screaming as the nunchaku they’re using threatens their face. Hi, yeah, that’s me and I’m not ashamed. I’m also not ashamed when my instructor decides to show the white belts the bunkai of their kata, Nai Hanchi Shodan, and decides that he will treat me as a human house of cards.

Tonight, as the white belts stood there watching his every move, my instructor used an on-guard position to trap my neck and send me dropping like a brick onto the floor. I’m a tall girl. At 5’9", when I drop, people know it. There were audible gasps and "Woah’s" and one "That had to hurt." My instructor responded with "She’s a green belt. She can handle it." I reminded him that this green belt happens to be a little older than your average green belt, but I think that’s part of what makes it more fun for the younger lower belts. When you see a mama dropping to the ground, they have visions of doing that to their own. Who wouldn’t like that vision after being asked to clean your room for the 14th time?

I also had the opportunity to work with a little yellow belt who will be testing next week for green. I worked on his kata and waza with him and helped him with kicks and self-defense as well. He’s very good at his kata, so I basically helped him with the little nit-picky stuff. It was so nice to be working with someone who wants to know their kata. I’m really hoping that Big I gets there sometime soon. Self-defense and waza are not a problem for her, but when it comes to kata, I think she gets overwhelmed and shuts down.

I told her that this weekend, we are breaking down the kata into small parts and she’s going to master each part over the course of three days so that she has six days or so to practice it as a whole for testing next week. She hasn’t tested the last few times because she really wasn’t ready. I want her to be ready this time. I really think that once she starts seeing more color on her belt, she’s going to get more motivated. She likes it when we line up at class and she’s not hanging out at the low end by herself. She likes having people below her, but she’s got to start practicing more if she wants to keep moving forward. It can’t be fun to watch others moving forward while you’re stagnant yourself.

With testing only a little over a week away, we worked tonight on weapons kata’s and self-defense. The self-defense I need to know for 3rd kyu is tricky. I need to know how to get out of a full nelson, a rear double wrist grab, and I also need to know how to get out of being held down on the ground or up against a wall. Practicing being held down on the ground doesn’t really happen at class. Unless it’s a women’s self-defense class, it’s just too awkward. So, our instructors usually demonstrate and then I take it home to have my husband sit on top of me while he threatens to tickle me and I threaten to head butt him if he doesn’t knock it the heck off right now, damn it.

He’s got me by a good 60 lbs or so and he’s a bigger guy. At 6’3" he dwarfs me so when I do the technique on him and it works, I know I’m good to go. Tonight I asked him to grab the front of my shirt and hold me against the wall. When my original plan of sending his elbows in wrong directions didn’t work, I grabbed his jaw/neck and twisted him off of me. He immediately let go and stumbled back away from me. "Ouch. Man, I think you just rubbed my gland or something," he said as he rubbed his neck. That was not the technique I was going for, but apparently I discovered something that works. We both erupted in laughter and moved on.

Next, I had him hold me down onto the floor. Whenever I’m trying something fairly new, I’ll sort of contemplate for a minute or two before I do the technique. My husband uses this as an opportunity to start talking trash at me, which usually makes me crack up laughing, which makes performing an unfamiliar technique that much harder. When I couldn’t do the technique right, we switched roles and my husband sent me flying and my elbow popping, literally. It was reminiscent of the whole knee going in a completely wrong direction thing of a few weeks ago. I started a tirade of ouch’s and other "pleasantries" and he cracked up laughing. He continued laughing until we switched places again and I wrapped his neck up pretzel style with my legs and heard him mumbling from the bottom of the pile, "Yeah, that works. No really. That definitely works."

So the injury count tonight is one sore popped elbow and one "rubbed" neck gland. I think my elbow is a bit more serious than a "rubbed" gland but that’s just me. I’ll have to let everyone at my dojo know that gland rubbing is the new joint lock (I swear, he’s still rubbing his neck a good hour after the incident). I’m also patting myself on the back for picking up the foam nunchaku during class tonight, or this post might have been brought to you from the ER. I think the nunchaku and I need to renegotiate our terms.

My new post "Would Dr. Phil Approve?" is up at Save the Soldiers. If you enjoyed reading about my husband and I sparring, this post offers some more analysis.