September 26, 2008

Jumping Back In with Both Knees

I don’t know how to ease my way back into karate, so I just jumped right in last night. I figured that while Big I was in class, I would take the early class which consists of mostly white to green belts. I adapted what I needed to, doing punches at full force but snap kicks in a very slow and controlled manner. Hanshi kept reminding me to take it easy, and I appreciated his acknowledging that it’s o.k. for me to do things differently.

When the class moved on to kata at full speed, Hanshi asked me to take a new white belt aside and teach him the 10-step blocking drill. The guy knew only the first block, but by the end of the class he was doing the entire drill correctly. I really like working with new people; I always have liked it. It gives me a chance to work on basics; and you always learn something more effectively when you’re teaching it to someone else. Plus, concentrating on someone else helps distract from your own worries about your less-than-perfect knee.

I figured I’d see how the first class went and then decide whether or not I felt like staying for the advanced class. As I watched my friends filing in for the second class, I decided that I really wanted to stay. I was feeling pretty good and figured I would give it a try. Before going to the dojo, I thought about grabbing my karate bag, but ended up leaving it at home figuring we wouldn’t be working weapons at all.

I was wrong. Since I didn’t have my own, I was given an incredible set of Hanshi’s sai to use. I believe they are Shureido; and they were easily the most incredible sai I’ve ever had the pleasure to use (Hint, hint Mr. BBM-Christmas present???). Before we started each weapons kata, I would stand there and try to get through it in my head, trying to predetermine areas that would be tricky for my knee or altogether impossible. I kept drawing a blank. My open hand kata are in there, but my weapons ones had started to fade a bit.

However, once we started moving through the kata, they started coming back to me. It felt so good to work through the moves and see all of the ones I can still do. As the night wore on, it became quite obvious that the sai kata are my friends, while the nunchaku kata is not. There’s a kneeling move in Odo No Nunchaku that just wasn’t going to happen. The second tunfa kata was difficult too. The fades to the back, followed by big pivots and quick movements were really hard. I found myself compensating by putting much more of my weight on my right leg. We won’t even discuss the jumps, except to say that I didn’t do them and my own version elicited a chuckle from Hanshi (Personally, I think he was relieved I didn’t try them).

The entire night, I kept hearing my surgeon’s wise advice, "You can go back, but you’re not going to be any good at it for a while." Every time I messed up, I repeated that in my head. It served as a comforting mantra for the night.

When all was said and done, I had completed two hours of class (the second being the most challenging), and I had a soaking wet gi (for the first time since the night I injured my knee) as my reward for all the hard work. Today, I am sore in the all the places I expected to be sore. Although my knee felt like it was going to mind it last night, today it feels pretty good.

The feeling I had driving home last night was so wonderful. The satisfying exhaustion that comes from a hard class is something I haven’t experienced in almost a year. Karate always made me a better person. I was able to get rid of the stress that was building up. After a hard work out, I was always in a better mood. The release after being unable to do karate for almost 11 months is just amazing. It had been building up all this time and going back is the biggest stress reliever ever. I am so happy to be back, slow pivots, lousy jumps, shaky nunchaku kata and all.

I’d like to wish my mother-in-law a very Happy Birthday! Your card from the girls is going to be late and it’s totally not their fault. I take full responsibility.

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