Evens it up a bit

Happened to catch sight of a reflection in the window at Tai Chi last night and noticed that I am more than a foot shorter than anyone else in the class. They are all unnecessarily tall. And then there's little me. Still, none of them would want to take me on in a pole fight....

Waiting for the third

I was in two minds about going to kickboxing and kung fu on Monday as my finger was still painful and I can't make a proper fist, but decided to go along anyway. So we get to the pad-work section of kickboxing and because I can't punch I get to hold the big kick pad....and proceed to get kicked right in the jaw by someone who I would have expected to have enough control by now to avoid aiming about 2 foot higher than expected!

It was a pretty powerful kick, T who saw it happened was convinced I must have a concussion, but although I did feel distinctly nauseous and dizzy for a while I was OK after 10 minutes or so...and no teeth loosened as far as I can tell.

But my grandma always used to say that accidents come in 3s - so what's the next one going to be?

Cracked Finger

Took a kick to the hand in kids kung fu this morning, right on the tip of my middle finger. A combination of an unexpected flying kick from one of the kids (I didn't even think he could do that!) and a half-arsed block by me, and now from the swelling and bruising (and pain!) I think it might have broken the "distal phalanx". Or maybe I'm just obsessed with the thought of broken bones and it's just very badly bruised....anyway it didn't stop me completing the class (although it did make me swear like a navvy and I hope he doesn't mention that to his mum) and then doing quite a bit of wing chun with T afterward. But it is inhibiting my typing a little...

Packing them in

Thursday night was organised chaos - twenty plus people in the tiny room because the footballers were in upstairs, across around 7 grades including some on their first lesson. But actually I think between us we managed to keep all the plates spinning, although those doing the weapons forms had to work on something else because there was definitely no room for swinging bokkens or poles. Afterwards went through bokken vs pole a few times, then off to tai chi. Worked through a bit more of the straight sword, clarifying a few things for me but there's still a sketchy section I need to consolidate a bit more. Then the first few moves of the pole set I learnt at a seminar about 3 years ago and have hardly practised since. Again since there was so little room in the hall we ended up practising one at a time while the others watched and offered criticisms - no pressure there then!

The Fear

Last weeks training schedule suffered a serious setback when my youngest, "Danger Girl", broke her arm again - the second time in 4 months, same arm, somewhat more serious this time. Quite badly displaced fracture and they thought they might have to put in some metal work to stabilise it, but looks like we've got away without that - just weekly visits to x-ray to check it's not moving....she'll glow in the dark at this rate!

She managed to get this injury not at kung fu, or gymnastics, where you might expect an element of risk, but at her ballet dancing lesson. Obviously the sooner I get her signed up for free-running classes the safer she'll be...

Anyway, after I'd received a phone call telling me she'd hurt herself, and probably broken several speed limits to get to her, I was faced with dealing with her arm which looked very, very wrong and was making me want to vomit, without showing any of my fear and upset to her. It looked like she had an extra elbow in the middle of her forearm...I just hope I never have to see anything like that again - especially on my kids, I think it would have been easier if it were my own arm (in fact I know it would - when I did a similar thing to my lower leg/ankle so that my foot was on back-to-front I found looking at it quite fascinating rather than toe-curlingly awful).

Anyway after spending a day or two at the hospital, including a general anesthetic to reduce the fracture, she is back home now and seems quite well - in fact keeping her still is proving something of a trial, but she's under strict orders that she must do nothing but sit still for the next couple of weeks - she can't even go back to school til she's had it checked out at the end of the week.

I did manage to get out to kickboxing and kung fu last night, both quite busy lessons, T is teaching me a bit of the more advanced kickboxing syllabus and in kung fu I got to teach biu jeet, which is a good challenge. The only trouble was that throughout the lessons I was constantly dwelling on how fragile the human body really is - to the extent that I was being very careful all evening. Hope this fear wears off soon....

Two out of Three ain't bad

Monday night the chinese kickboxing class was brightened by a guy I know from the Tai Chi class showing up to give it a try. It's an unusual combo, most people in the school who train in more than one do tai chi and kung fu, or kung fu and kickboxing, (I'm the honorable exception by doing all three!) but he's decided to go for the kickboxing rather than kung fu because he reckons his brain is full just learning tai chi stuff, the kung fu would be a step too far whereas the kickboxing is fairly simple to learn and gives him a bit of a cardio workout. It was nice to pair up with him on something that's more my home territory, since he kicks my ass at pushing hands every time we try it at Tai Chi.

Kung fu later was mostly wing chun for me, then a bit of mantis. More good news - it sounds like J and A are going to start coming along on Saturdays after the kids class to train on the higher grade stuff with me and T, it will be good to have a couple more people to try stuff out on....

The Measure of All Things?

Good set of kids lessons on Saturday, I seem to be making connections with some of the kids that had been more stand-offish with me 'til now.

Also 3 new people in the older kids class which is good, one of them is an ex-karateka who is obviously quite proficient but will have her work cut out a bit re-learning some of the stances in a more kung fu style.

After the kids had left went through some stuff with T for a while, the Wing Chun 2 person drills are coming on although I somehow don't seem to be able to remember them at all, just react on instinct to whatever T does and it seems to work.

I need to start trying to write some of the stuff down, but it is very hard to describe effectively in words and my anatomical drawing skills aren't up to sketching it instead.

Forgotten Steps

Thursday night kung fu, I got to take the higher group initially and teach them the single person bokken drill. Then a bit of time with the beginners (mostly kids now) working on Char Chui 1.

Quite a few rounds of sparring which made a nice change.

Then a brief run through of Li Pi with T - all my problems solved just by the addition of a forgotten step in 2 places. I must write it down this time while it's fresh in my mind.

Went through bokken vs pole a few times with N, which was just as well because when we went down to Tai Chi D asked us to give a demonstration of it to the rest of the class. After that lots of time working on pole which is always fun, then the 2-person pa kua - starting to get quite reasonable I think, providing I'm paired up with someone who can keep their end up.

Grabbed D at the end to run through the first part of the Chen style that was getting a bit rusty. As we were leaving D asked me if I wanted to start going to the Southampton training days. I'm quite keen except it means using up lots of precious holiday days at work. I'll have to try to figure out how much I can spare.

Lost It

Snatched a few minutes to practise this lunchtime, but to my great distress discovered I seem to have forgotten a large part of the Li Pi Mantis set. Where's that gone? Maybe my brain is full and something has to go for each new set I learn.

Shake it baby, shake it

Usually when we train on Monday night we are in the small hall and the belly dancers are in the main room. But last night their teacher was ill and the class was cancelled. So we took our chance and grabbed the bigger hall. Meanwhile a steady flow of trainee belly dancers kept turning up. We managed to persuade one to stay and train with us...and she was a natural! I guess it's not that surprising that a dancer should be well co-ordinated, but she picked up what we were doing in the kick-boxing really quickly. And she enjoyed it so much she says she'll come again. And no she wasn't scantily clad....

Got to teach 2 things I've never taught before last night too - the single person miao dao (bokken) drill and the "mantis grasps cicada"