March 22, 2009

A Comedy of Errors, Form of Weapons

When you return after 17 months off and go full blast with the kobudo weapons as you did before, there are bound to be some bumps and bruises. I started off with forearm bruises from the bo and another large and well placed bo bruise right above the elbow on the upper outside of my arm. That one, although painful, was cool. I seem to remember someone saying that if you have that bruise, you're doing it right. I pretty much wanted to wear a tank top to show it off, even in 30 degree weather.

Despite this trophy bruise though, I also had a bit of a sore spot right at my hairline on my forehead, where I kind of bounced the bo off my head. I don't even think I was doing kata at that point. Bouncing a bo off your head truly takes talent when not even doing something official. Truly.

Here's a picture of someone using a bo without whacking himself in the head.

 Bostaff 

Then came the tunfa. The first night I used them again, I smacked my knee brace pretty good with them. Man, I was thankful I had a brace on and wasn't going it without one. That would have hurt. I also hit myself in the head during the course of kata. I'm trying to remember how I did it, but if I recall correctly (keep in mind this is the second head trauma in two weeks), I believe it was from an over-ambitious upward block. Don't ask.

That's an upward block in the picture below. Clearly, this talented man has the tunfa nowhere near his noggin. You learn something new every day.

Tunfa 

Then came nunchaku. Nunchaku and I have had a love/hate relationship for quite some time. While nunchaku, for many men, is an absolute dream weapon, actually operating the little suckers can be quite tricky. I was tempted to ask my one instructor to borrow his foam ones for my first run through, but instead I just went ahead with my wooden ones. If you can recover from ACL surgery, you can take a whack or two from nunchaku.

I took several. I whacked my back much harder than I would have liked to, and I also smacked my thigh hard enough to leave a little bruise. Thankfully, I didn't knock myself unconscious with them. Here's a picture of a woman in Okinawa not knocking herself unconscious with them. When you imagine nunchaku, imagine me like this. . .

Nunchaku 

Finally, we come to the sai. One must keep in mind that my sai are brand new Shureido sai. I've been using craptastic sai for many years and am only now getting to use some decent sai with the right angle where your hands go. Here's a picture of me, pre-injury, acting like I know what I'm doing with my crappy ones.

DSC02701  

So far, I have yet to injure myself with my new ones, but I do have to admit that I am having a terrible time getting them caught in my gi sleeves and top. It's a good thing I wear a tank top underneath during training because my sai are convinced that I don't need to wear my top at all. I need to figure out what the heck I'm doing wrong. Disrobing at the dojo, during class, or (God Forbid!) during eventual testing would be just a tad bit embarrassing. 

Speaking of embarrassing, my biggest gaffe so far, happened on Saturday morning. During a black belt/wanna-be-black-belt workout at the dojo, we were working on some tunfa kata. Still getting used to my new purple heart custom Crane Mountain tunfa, and sweating up a storm, I did the equivalent of what would be a major party foul, like spilling a full beer for example. I spun my tunfa around and to my horror, watched it spiral toward the floor. It hit with a loud klunk, despite the foam floors. A girl can hope that no one noticed, but my usual training buddies around me had definitely noticed. One was grinning ear to ear and the other sort of chuckled. They laugh because they've done it themselves, many times, probably, right guys?

Anyway, having your training buddies notice is one thing. Having Hanshi announce that "dropping your tunfa is optional" as he explains the steps in the kata. . . well, you can pretty much guess that everyone now knows. Yep, everyone. Brown belts are there for amusement purposes though right? I take that role seriously. I figure if you can't laugh at yourself, then it's going to be pretty lonely as everyone else laughs at you right?

Returning to karate may be like riding a bicycle; but the words of my surgeon continue to echo in my head, "You're not going to be any good at it for a while."

He's a wise man indeed.

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Posted by on March 22, 2009 in Tales from the dojo | 7 Comments

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