A Bright Yellow Blip in an Otherwise Yucky Weekend
Friday morning my Dad was admitted to the hospital under emergent conditions again. The diagnosis this time? A blood clot, hanging by a thread, in his calf. He had a procedure done while completely 100% awake and aware to place a filter in a vein in case the clot comes loose and travels to areas where the harm could be devastating. I can not even begin to imagine being awake while someone threads a filter into your neck and down through your vein.
It has been a month since his craniotomy and now he sits in the hospital once again. We are hoping that the blood thinners start working and that they don’t cause harm to his already fragile brain so that he can come home soon. Needless to say, I am completely stressed, worried, and on top of all of that, I am getting sick like the girls (but that was written in the stars).
Adding to the stress, karate testing was on Saturday. Big I is now a 7th kyu yellow belt. She is super excited about her new color. She insisted on visiting her Pop-Pop at the hospital after testing so she could show him her new belt, something she had never really thought about before. She has been working really hard at home, actually asking me to help her with her kata and self defense.
Testing this time didn’t go much beyond kata (her weakest component) and waza, so she didn’t really get to show off her self defense and her Japanese vocabulary that she’s been working on faithfully. My only wish is that at testing she would do the things the way she does them at home. She gets very shy and tentative at the dojo, but at home her kiai can be heard by the neighbors. Testing was a full house this time and I think that was intimidating for her. I know that with time that will improve, I hope.
I also "tested" on Saturday but did not get my next stripe. I received the compliment of all compliments from the head instructor when he said that my nunchaku kata is "one of my best" and that he was surprised that I felt I had issues with it. I was floored and have to make sure to relay that compliment to the instructor who taught me that particular kata, because he probably would have liked to knock me unconscious with the nunchaku as he continued to patiently beat it into my head week after week after week for the past several months.
So back to the lack of stripe business, my instructor said that there are mandatory waits at certain belts and that I’m currently in one. I asked and he clarified that it was not at all a reflection on how well I did my material, only that I need to wait until March to get the next stripe. I’m fine with waiting. I wait now, test in March, test in June, and then start the six month cycle before black belt testing which will hopefully happen in December of 2007.
Was I disappointed? Sure I was, especially since as high rank I was there for a very long time on Saturday when a lot was going on in my family. It didn’t really bother me until I got home and was telling my husband about it. Then I started thinking that all the other students who were there and all the people who were watching testing may very well think that I failed my test when they don’t see a new stripe on my belt. I know I shouldn’t care what other people think, but the human flaw is that I do.
I’m going to try not to let it bother me if someone notices or says something, and instead concentrate on learning the material for 2nd kyu and tweaking the kata’s I already know. I’ll have to do that anyway before black belt testing. No time like the present to continue getting ready.
After all, a wait period is small potatoes compared to craniotomies and blood clots so I’m going to count my blessings and hope that 2007 brings lots of good health for my family and a black belt for me.
Black Belt Class
Last week, the head instructor at our dojo suggested than I start attending black belt class along with another brown belt student. The idea of a half hour of just brown belt material, followed by an hour of black belt class sounded divine. I have always enjoyed being in class with people who are higher ranks than I am, and lately I’m one of the high ranks and therefore spend a lot of time reviewing, not looking ahead.
So, the brown/black belt class ended up being an hour and a half of weapons katas. It was a work out. We started out with a tunfa kata needed for 1st kyu brown belt. Neither of us knew any of the kata, but by the end of the night, we were both very familiar with it. It’s a good thing too, because an hour into the class, our instructor had to leave and another instructor took over.
She was my teacher in the beginning, back in my white belt days, and she knows how to work your butt. There is no such thing as a class with her that doesn’t involve lots of sweat. She hopped onto the training floor and asked what we were doing and started doing that tunfa kata as if we’d been doing it for weeks. At first it was intimidating, but at the end of the night, when you walk out of the dojo having a decent grasp on a kata that you had no clue even existed when you first walked in, well, it feels pretty good.
What doesn’t feel good is your arms and legs the day after black belt class. I came home and was completely exhausted. I ended up falling asleep on the sofa and woke up the next morning feeling like a truck hit me.
Of course, you also need to keep in mind that I was a helper Mom at my daughter’s Kindergarten class on the same day. Twenty-five screaming 5-year-olds also have the ability to make one feel as if a truck has hit them. . .
Or several trucks for that matter.
Pre-Testing
I used to teach high school English. I had well over 130 students each year and stood up in front of them daily. With the exception of the first day, I was never nervous. In college, I used to speak in front of large groups, like the entire Pitt football team for one, about sexual assault of all things. Nervous? Never.
One would think that after having worked as a teacher and as a PEER Educator, standing up in front of people wouldn’t be a problem. But there is something about Pre-Testing at the dojo that is just nerve-wracking for me. I get so nervous and then I spend the entire time mentally beating myself up for every mistake, and verbally assaulting myself with each wrong move.
At one point tonight, after I had enlisted the help of a black belt with my Choun bo kata, my instructor told me to stop beating myself up from across the dojo as he helped another brown belt with her kata.
I want to be perfect. I don’t want to show up at testing and screw up. I hate that. I remember when I was a white belt, I would sometimes watch the brown belts and wonder why they didn’t remember Kata 2 or Waza 3. I thought I would surely remember everything when I was a brown belt.
But the mind is a funny thing. It holds on to things you need and then tucks them away into the depths once it’s not an immediate need anymore. . .
Or my brain is just completely fried from the whole Lil C non-napping thing. My brain needs that nap almost as much as she does. O.k. more.
Taking Out Little Gold Karate Guys
There have been lots of discussions about kobudo (weapons) and their usefulness in today’s world. When, for example, will you actually be carrying around a bo staff (6 ft. long piece of rounded wood for the non-karate folk)? How will knowing how to use a bo actually help you in an attack situation?
Well, I am here to tell you that if any three foot high person, built like a karate tournament trophy decides to attack me and my bo is handy. . . well, let’s just say that there may be a decapitation or more. The bo may seem harmless when going through the motions of a kata, but my bo showed the karate dude on top of my instructors trophy what was up the other night. Not only did my bo knock the karate dude completely off the trophy, it also sent him flying across the dojo. Another reason people, even little gold karate guys, should wear seat belts or something.
My instructors all have a wealth of trophies that they’ve earned throughout the years. One of our instructors has had his trophies on the side of the dojo training floor for a while now. They are lined up three or four trophies deep. I’ve knocked them over before, but I never damaged one quite like that.
So, to make up for hurting the little gold karate guy, I bought some super glue and went to town on the trophy after class last night. It seemed to be working just fine. . . until I walked away and he went tumbling down yet again. I added more glue and tried again. Same thing happened. One of my other instructors then offered to assist with the operation and held the little guy in place while I wrapped medical tape around the joint (I used to be a trainer in high school, you know). It’s now quite a site, and I have little optimism that the wrap job will do the trick.
One thing is for sure. I will be practicing my weapons kata’s from the opposite end of the dojo as long as those trophies remain there. I’d rather take out imaginary people than defenseless little karate guys stuck in a side kick.
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.
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