May 27, 2009

A Serious Case of the Sillies

Last night at the dojo, it was just one of those nights. Although I've been fairly serious about my training for the past few weeks, last night I was tired and everything was cracking me up. I wasn't the only one with the problem.

When the advanced class started, our teacher asked us what we wanted to do. I made the unfortunate mistake of saying I was "up for anything minus break falls and roll falls." I was thinking open hand or kobudo. I wasn't thinking 30 minutes of kicking.

We have this young green belt who loves competition and loves kicking. She also likes doing kata with her eyes closed but that's another story. In attendance was the young green belt, our instructor, two 20-something black belts, me and a 40-something 1st kyu.

With the black belts on one side of the floor and me and my brown belt buddy on the other side, we started doing some kicking drills. We started with simple snap kicks and thrust kicks. Then it was crescent and roundhouse. We did some knees and heel-butt which are more like hell-butt kicks when I have to use my left leg. There seemed to be a disproportionate amount of intensity from the black belt side of the dojo, while the other 1st kyu and I debated about whether or not it would be acceptable for us to hold onto the wall in the back of the training floor so as not to fall over.

I used to love kicking. It was one of my favorite things to do. Post knee-injury? Not so much. I'd rather watch four hours straight of Star Wars than do kicking drills; and if you know me and my deep and established dislike of Star Wars, then you know how much I want to avoid kicking.

Every time we thought we had exhausted all the types of possible kicks, our teacher, the green belt or one of the black belts would come up with another type of kick, which is why one of those black belts will forever retain the nickname "Ax Kick Eric" from now on.

After 20 minutes of straight kicking, when your leg protests full extension, one is not too happy to hear the words "ax kick." I thank you "Ax Kick Eric" for those ax kicks last night and so do my ailing leg muscles; and I mean that in the most sarcastic way possible.

I announced to my 1st kyu friend that I would be pretending I was fighting a midget for this round of kicks; and then we made helpless faces at each other in the mirror until we were finished.

Finally, after 4000 types of kicks, the young green belt says she wants to have a kicking contest. I said we should forgo the contest and just name her the grand champion. Although I think she was sort of satisfied with that, I really think she wanted the pride of knowing she had beaten up on the ailing brown belts a bit more than having us just hand over a title.

I do have to say I learned an important lesson last night though. When your teacher looks directly at you and asks what you want to do. . . you better be specific, VERY specific.