Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Beating up on children....BWAHAHAHAHA!

Now, don't read that wrong. I'm against child abuse of any form! However, what the title of this post refers to is the ability I had tonight of practically wailing on two teenage girls that are old enough to be my daughters and already 1st degree BBs, and oops, almost enjoying it!

I was too lazy to go to regular class tonight, since we don't have morning classes for a few weeks. Between being tired and my bad knee acting up, I just wasn't going to risk two hours of a workout. One hour, perhaps, but not two. Due to a few local graduations, exams, people already out of town, there were only 5 of us in class. Two were the C sisters, and the other two were Ben P and his mom, Dr. Mrs. P. (his dad is Dr. Mr. P.)-- and me. We started out with these back stretches that were, well, just physically impossible for me. While I realize that my core muscles are not as strong as they should be, these exercises just put way too much strain on my back, so after a while, I was cheating because I just couldn't do them, properly or otherwise. There was a counter stretch that we did afterwards, which I believe was the equivalent of the "cobra" in yoga, which that was fine. I can do that.

We then worked on first sections and last section of my form. Or I should say, RA and I did. It was working out the little details. I can do my form, I'm just rusty. So at least with the first section, I had the correct stance, with correct weight and foot placement, and I had the hands just fine. I remembered the last section more or less, but just needed some tweaks with the hands. Forgot the the hands were crossed high spearhands, not close fisted, and my starting position of my hands before doing that on the right side weren't quite right, for whatever reason. But they were easy fixes.

Working on weapons was next. Reviewed the whole thing of SJB drills, and again, just had some tweaks. After all, I was just given the correct striking lines a week ago, so it was some small adjustments. Also had some adjustments throwing in some twirl in the swings back to starting position, but nothing that couldn't be handled. Since it was so easy, RA decided to teach me the "advanced" basic skills, which were a reverse figure 8 (okay, that one I have to figure out a little better), neck wraps, and lassoes. I'm not sure if there was another one or not, but other than the reverse figure 8s, I could do all of those. I'll be fine for testing in August for that part. I don't need to know the advanced stuff, but it doesn't hurt to learn it, since I'll have to learn them eventually anyway. I'm just not a big fan of SJBs, but heck, it's the main weapons that I think is used more than any other in the ATA. I'm a SN/BME/JB gal, but heck, we can't be all things to all people, right?

Board breaking-- learned a new break, and got it on the 2nd try! It's a back elbow, whereby you stand facing one way, and have to break a board behind you with, yes, you guessed it, your elbow. You reach out the hand you are breaking with with a fist, grab that hand with your other hand, take a step back with the foot of the same hand, and with a little back twist and momentum, CRACK! Part of my problem at first was that I was letting go of my fist when I threw the move. The other part of the problem was that being that I wear glasses, my peripheral vision is limited. I was told to twist around more to see my target, but then I felt too twisted around. The spot where I needed to see was just exactly the spot where my glasses weren't. Bleeh. Oh well. As I said, I still broke it on the 2nd try.

Then there was the sparring. I think yesterday's exercise in "deep pool diving", especially if I continue to do it, will help with my breathing capacity. Tonight, while I did get tired, I felt like I was on FI-YAH! The C girls didn't have a chance! The first round, we had to only use our kicking, and we could only use our hands to block, no punches. Well, since I've always worked on kick combinations, poor MC was just fending off and fending off, although she was throwing in some good kicks as well. She at least worked at it. Next round was only punches. Being the odd person out, I had to go up against RA, and he was giving me some pointers in helping me with punching only combos. He knows this is my weakness, and he pointed out that this is many people's weakness in TKD. So, I was getting some good info from that. You can guess what happened next. I went up against KC, and I think she was a little tired anyway, but I kept beating her back with both hand and foot combos, and kept having this look on her face of, "Could you please stop and have mercy on me, just for a minute?" I think she was worn, but she really wasn't going for it as much as she should. Between the two sisters, I believe that MC is more gung ho. That's fine. To each, their own. But other than sweating up a storm, and a slightly sore knee, I felt good. Yup, deep pool diving is going to help a lot. Having a new faceshield is a lot better too-- no fogging up, and I can breathe in it!

So overall, I'm feeling okay about what I have to do this cycle. The form is coming along, I have the first half of my board break figured out-- just have to get the practice time in, weapons just need some practice too, and I'm feeling, after tonight, that I'll get some good sparring come time for the tournament.

Gotta think of training for the tournament now! Tournament season has restarted this week with Worlds. If you get a chance, (and if I have this URL correct), you'll have to check out the opening ceremonies on Friday night of the World Championships. I watched it last year, and it was great! A little over the top, but great. SW is one of the coaches of the World Demo team, and I'm not sure if Em is still on the World Demo team or not. And I've seen most of those testing for those super high ranks, or at least I'm familiar with many of them.

The link is: http://www.ataonline.com/atavideo07/.

Have a good rest of the week! We'll see how Saturday morning goes.

4 comments:

Miss Chris said...

The rear elbow break was always my favorite. Elbow breaks were the only ones I could do consistently on my first try.

frotoe said...

I'm dying to break a board! We don't do that too often in my school. Every once and a while, though, they'll have a promotional thing~mostly for the kids~ to sign up for "bring a buddy-break a board" where they can bring a non-karate student in for a class and they both get to break a board. (some of the adults like to call it "bring a board, break a buddy"-haha-we're so corny)
congrats on the sparring...that must have felt great :)

Penelope said...

Tonight (World's this year) is Em's final performance with the Demo team for at least a year or two.

Thank you for reminding me of this! I nearly forgot. Oops!

Mathieu said...

Hehe, good for you that you had fun.

I remember my first board break. The board was standing on two cement bricks.

I missed the board's center, hitted the brick and basically crushed the board along with my skin. It did break, but it hurt like you cannot imagine.

What's worst, I had to break another with that hurt hand. And I found out that with proper aiming, they break quite easily!

Lol

be well