November 16, 2006

No Pain, No Gain II

No pain, no gain. Right? Karate class was a lot of moving drills this week. We worked a lot on proper stances: seisan and nai hanchi in particular. (For the non-karate-ka’s, seisan is a position where one leg is in front of the other. You have a wide stance. The front knee bends so that your knee is over top of your toes. Your back leg is straight, but not locked into place. Nai Hanchi stance is pretty much like you are sitting on a chair minus the chair. . . a killer squat if you will.)

In my one class, we sometimes have issues with people not paying attention or not taking things seriously enough. So because of this, I will be able to give a big ‘thank you’ to my instructor once swimsuit season rolls around. One can’t stand in nai hanchi stance for long without getting a serious leg and derriere workout. Nai hanchi isn’t bad when you’re moving in drills or kata, but standing in nai hanchi alone is an exercise in control: control over your body and control over your mind which is SCREAMING at you to either sit or stand. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, NO INBETWEENS! My legs spent a lot of time screaming at me last night, and my knee is really screaming at me today.

I’m not sure if the squishy painful knee is from the moving drills or the self-defense against kicks that we worked on last night. I knew it was going to be trouble when my instructor pulled out the mat. I knew I was in REALLY big trouble when he motioned for me to be the uke (helper, or in other words ‘the one who will be in pain‘). He tapped his chest and told me to do a roundhouse kick and I had to take a deep breath because I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. Two seconds after my kick neared the target area, I was being thrown to the ground.

*Note to self: Must practice proper form for break falls.

Proper form is not allowing your head to slam the mat. Proper form is not being stiff on impact. Hello sore neck, and one seriously messed up knee. It feels sort of like the whole snap-krackle-pop thing that I had going on back when the self-defense techniques went seriously wrong on my husband a while back. It also doesn’t help that I was so exhausted from class yesterday that I fell asleep on the sofa in a less than helpful position and didn’t make it to my actual bed until somewhere around 3 a.m.

But I’m not complaining. Next time I spar with my husband I’m going to try my new techniques and hope that he doesn’t catch on as to how to do them.

In my advanced class this week, I got a sneak peak at a kata for 2nd degree black belt. I got to try out the bo-bo kata and it was really cool. As a white belt, I loved when there were higher ranks in my class. That way I got a preview of what I would have to do in the future and it made it easier to learn when I got to that point. At my dojo, there’s only one non-black belt student ahead of me in rank who is active in the dojo, so opportunities to look ahead don’t happen all that often anymore.

Lately though, I am constantly thinking about what’s ahead. I don’t mind spending 20 minutes in nai hanchi stance because I want to make sure that by the time I get to black belt testing, I could stand in nai hanchi stance all day without even thinking about it. If and when I become a black belt, I want to be a black belt, not just some girl who has a black belt. There’s definitely a difference and when I get there, I want to know I’ve earned the privilege.

No pain. . . truly no gain.

This post is dedicated to Steve who started an entire blog based on conquering Nai Hanchi stance.