skip

I skipped going to jits tonight, because what was happening was a belt promotion. During a belt promotion, everyone sits in a big circle and takes turns rolling with the promoted one, and here are some things about that:

1. While I will happily talk in front of a large or small group of people about anything at any time, for some reason rolling in front of a group of people pretty much paralyzes me. Possibly because I am an expert talker, but a novice martial artist.
2. Because I am, in this situation, always the lower belt level (these promotions only happen with blue belts and above), I always have to start standing up, and my guard passing is abysmal, and this is embarrassing.
3. I find sitting cross-legged really uncomfortable, particularly when it goes on for an hour.
4. I know, I KNOW that I should be supporting the people being promoted, because I will hopefully one day be in their shoes, and I will be glad of the support, but I worked for 12 hours yesterday and 11 hours today, and the only reason I drag myself to martial arts in this state of exhaustion is for the exercise, and I knew that I would just sit there watching the clock and thinking desperately about how I was missing sleep and not even getting any exercise. The people being promoted do not need that kind of negativity. 

So I'm at home. When I arrived here, I realized that I had also forgotten that I scheduled a Spanish conversation on skype at 7 pm. I realized this around, oh, 7:40. I felt bad. I messaged the grandpa in Guatemala, but he was no longer around.

And now it is 9:25 pm. My teeth are brushed. My face is washed. I am ready to sleep, and I need it.

27: pull it together

I wasn't really thinking straight at the beginning of yesterday's post*, because of course I wouldn't be alive without modern medicine: I wouldn't have been born. My dad was diagnosed with Type I diabetes five years before I was born, and without modern medicine I would never have existed.

So there's that. Doesn't fix the antibiotic crisis, though.

In other news, I was supposed to drill with Crusher again today. Not rolling, this time, but practicing one particular thing (rear naked choke, if you are interested. no, no one is naked for this move. I think it's called naked because your poor little neck is exposed). Crusher is a lot stronger than me, so he just basically rolled over and rolled me with him while I was supposed to have his back. 

Fine. One of the coaches last week, after my arms hurt too much to continue, pointed out to me that Crusher has no posture. He gets by on force alone, and that only goes so far. "Keep him broken down," the coach said. "Just wear him out."

So when Crusher rolled over and tried to get the best of me, I let him roll. I kept him in my guard, though (this means I had my legs around his torso with my ankles crossed on the other side), and when we got to the point where I was on my back on the ground, I just reached up and fastened my hands into his gi at the neckline so he was constantly bent over. Can't get your torso straight? Not much you can do. He could basically stand himself up with me hanging off his neck, but he never did straighten at his waist to give himself some control. I WIN.

Then we played some crazy choking game where you try to get the ball through a goal but you can make people leave the floor if you can choke them. 

This devolved into a huge pile of adults crushing each other. 

Adults should not be allowed to play games like this. The same thing happened with the dodge ball in my martial arts school in Universe City: the kids can play it just fine, but the adults are too competitive. The balls hurt during dodge ball, and this game got pretty violent, too. I finally just started picking someone off and trying to choke them so they couldn't beat down my team's player on the bottom of the pile.  

We lost.

* I am not thinking straight much of the time, lately. Yesterday someone asked me, "How's it going?" and I answered, "Not much." She was pretty appalled. I am just too tired to process anything but the necessary. The focus kicks in for the necessary, but not for much else.

20: Crusher

I usually go to stand-up fighting on Wednesday, but I love the M-W instructor's style and this week is my favorite position (turtle, remember?) and so I went to BJJ instead. 

The class was good. I felt like I learned.

And then we rolled. 

I somehow ended up rolling with a new guy, who wasn't wearing a gi. I should have realized that this would be a mistake, but I was all merrily excited to roll, and I didn't even think of it.

My experience with sparring/rolling with the new guy is that it sucks. Not every new guy, but the new guy who is overeager and really strong and thinks he should skip past the rules because he is so into this new thing.

He mashed me into the ground. He didn't have any form to it, and one of the instructors pointed out to me later that he had no posture, either. He just laid his weight into me and pinned me down, and there was no way to get back up from the sheer force of him.

I could only think two things:

1. protect your breathing, and 

2. don't go self-defense ballistic on him. 

The only thing I could do was use my arms to keep him from getting his full weight on my chest, because then I would not be able to breathe. Because he wasn't wearing a gi, I almost tore his t-shirt trying to keep a grip on him, but I couldn't use the fabric to slow him down or keep him away. Instead, his entire weight was pressed on my arms, trying to flatten me.

And the whole time I kept reminding myself that this is jiu jitsu, not dirty street fighting, and I was not allowed to gouge his eyes or dig my fingers into his neck.

Which is not to say that I didn't want to gouge his eyes or dig my fingers into his neck. Oh, I did want to, very much.

It was a great relief to roll next with another fairly cautious yellow belt who would, like me, stop and think when we got to an impasse, rather than just crushing by brute force.

Then I had to give up, because Crusher had mortally wounded my gimpy arms for the evening. Ow. Next time I am just refusing to go near him.

18: jits

I"m sure the entire world will be fascinated to know that in the aftermath of my cold - I use aftermath loosely, since I am still snotting on a regular basis, and by a regular basis I mean about every three minutes - I feel like I am, for the first time in possibly years, maybe actually clearing out my sinuses. 

The bad news is that I feel dizzy when I blow my nose or sinus rinse my sinuses. Details.

...

I've been getting more serious about jiu jitsu rather than standup fighting. As in, if I have a choice on a given evening, I suit up for jits. The result has been two black tape stripes on my white-and-yellow belt in a span of about a month, where I had gone for three months with none. (Admittedly, I now go more often to a class where the teacher is much more about encouragement and getting to know his students, too.)

I've also been trying to roll more frequently. It's hard, because rolling after my class most days is from 8:30 to 9, and if there is one thing concerning which I feel frantic these days, it is protecting my going home, relaxing, and getting ready to go to bed on time window. And yet, I want to improve my jiu jitsu, and so I persist. 

We were practicing quarter position top today, which means how to get a person out of turtle position, and the moments were not few in which my partner rolled onto my hand or we smashed knees. I shall examine my bruises of honor by the light of day tomorrow and revel in them.

Then we rolled, and I got smashed by five orange and green belts. It was good for me. I learned some things. Probably not regulation things, but some of them worked for me. 

Unfortunately, the gimpy of my arms was not improved by all of the desperate gripping of collars and sleeves that I had to do. When you don't yet have the technical ability, sometimes all you have is the modicum of strength in your arms and legs to keep that person from crushing you. It sort of worked, and now my hands hurt.

variously

Today in jiu jitsu, we did this exercise where you grab the sleeve and collar of your partner and jump up so your legs are around their waist. The exercise is really for the standing person to practice taking the weight, so we practiced with people roughly our own size.

Being a tall woman, I ended up working with a man who was a couple of inches taller than me, but reasonably slender. 

I surprised myself: I actually did dare to jump up like that, to trust myself to hang on. 

And then I surprised myself even more: I had no trouble holding the guy up.

And then I surprised myself still more: I could hang on with my legs and lean my head back down to the ground and do situps to work on core strength.

Apparently I am stronger than I think I am. 

See also: the 2.5 minute plank in stand-up fighting is no longer a problem.

It's funny, because those 90 minute stand-up classes are still kicking my tail. I can barely make it through. But I must be getting stronger somewhere in there.

...

It's the time of year when people bring grocery bags full of tomatoes into the office, and I am stocking up for winter. I roasted a big pan of cherry tomatoes yesterday, all different colors, and today I am simmering down tomatoes with butter to freeze in an ice cube tray. (Next time I am going to flash-boil them and take the skins off. They are quite annoying in the sauce.)

The corn is getting big and too starchy, and I bought the wrong kind of beans, so the salad that my niece called "the stinky salad" didn't taste great.

I'm starting to wonder if squash is back in season.

...

I had a conversation today which I switched to Spanish, and the communication was better in Spanish than in English. 

Which is not saying much. 

But it's better than a month ago, when I couldn't find any words at all in Spanish. I think the mere act of thinking about Spanish when I'm with the teacher and while doing the homework has made me think in or about Spanish at other times. I find myself thinking of how to say things in Spanish even when it isn't necessary.

That, and I've had a bunch of situations where I needed Spanish interpreters lately. It's all fresh in my head.

tremble

I thought I was in pretty good shape in Universe City. I worked out three times a week, mixed martial arts and such, and I tried to hike or walk or run or something at least one other day.

Um. 

The MMA classes I took in Universe City were a maximum of 45 minutes of hard-core workout. We would then move on to some sort of self-defense scenario.

Now that I am in the advanced MMA class here in Gone West, it is a solid 90 minutes.

I am not in that kind of shape.

Today, at the end, I waved goodbye to the guy I'd been working with and said thank you, and I realized that I wasn't opening my hand all the way. Odd. I looked at it again in the women's changing room, and when I tried to pull my pinkie and ring finger back to be level with the rest of my hand, they started shaking.

I am struggling to type even now. My pinkie and ring finger seem to be out of my control. A little too much of the 16 ounce gloves?

Don't worry, it's not the golf elbow hand. It's the other one. So it's fine, right? Totally fine.

funny bone of the knee

So did you know that if you do a switch-kick at the same time as your sparring partner does a round kick, your knees will slam together and it will feel like you've hit the funny bone of your leg?

Yeah, me neither,  until yesterday.

I hopped around for a minute, and then grabbed a shelf to stay upright.

"It feels like I hit my funny bone, only on my leg," I said. "I can't feel my foot."

"That always makes me feel like I'm going to throw up," the coach said. 

"Yeah, that, too."

But when the feeling died down, I was back in the ring.

I iced it last night, and today the bruise is dripping down under the skin below the extra bulge in my knee. It hurts to bend my knee, but I'm operating under the assumption that this is the kind of wound that benefits from forcing it to move while riding my bike rather than the kind that gets worse with use.

Sometimes I'm tempted not to ice things so that I can have a wicked bruise to show off, until I remember that I need to be able to kick things again by tomorrow night, and I dig out the ice pack (the one I can find; it's amazing how much I cannot find after moving). I would rather fight again immediately than have a grislier wound to display to the world at large.

easy

I wrapped my ankle for two days, until I read on Dr. Google that compression diminishes circulation and circulation promotes healing. Then I unwrapped it and gingerly took my first steps outside the safety of the wrap, like a colt that is afraid that its legs won't hold it up. 

My ankle holds me up, and if I am a little more worried than usual about the risks of turning it at any given moment, well, I think that is only fair.

I bought a little wrap thing that billed itself as moderate support, for workouts, because I want to keep my ankle strong by forcing it to move, rather than putting it into one of those lace-up things that hold it stiff. 

Then I went off to fighting class.

I know.

My excuse is that I thought we were doing a belt test, and usually during belt tests we just watch while the person getting the belt rolls with everyone in the gym until the testee is exhausted and looks like he (they've all been hes so far, that I've seen) wants to die. I figured I could watch and baby my ankle at the same time.

Only there were so many people there that they sent the stand-up people to do stand-up (this included me) and the white and yellow belts BJJ people had class on the other mat and only the orange and up belts watched the rolling.

I wrapped my ankle in the little wrap thing and told myself I would take it easy.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

It's like I don't even know myself when it comes to fighting. Look, I am totally a person who knows how to chill. I can turn off work mode in an instant. I can spend entire weekend days lazing about. I can leave the bathroom uncleaned until I begin to worry that there might be new species evolving in there.

I cannot go half-in at fighting.

So I worked hard, and it was fantastic. My ankle held up. 

At the end, at the sparring time, one of the owners came over and sparred with us. This guy is tall, maybe 6'4" or so, and he has these incredibly long arms. He doesn't even bother to hold his gloves up near his face to protect it, he just sort of swings these lazy, looping punches that reach you only because his arms are so long. As they came in, I kept thinking there was no way, he was too far away, but then there they came.

I haven't sparred in months, and I've never sparred with someone with so much reach. I'm used to being able to hang back and just jab at people, because I have pretty long arms myself, but I was forced to cover up and move in close, where I could pummel him for a while. 

I only realized afterwards how nervous I had been. Sparring with someone so big is intimidating.

ankle

I was having a day that vacillated between below-average and mediocre, just due to everything going wrong (although I wasn't really feeling below-average to mediocre; I was feeling fine) and so I was excited to go to fighting class, because fighting makes everything better.

And it did.

We were doing jabs today. I expected to be back to that place where I have to lift my left hand onto the steering wheel, because that is just how wimpy my left arm is, plus I took some time off to go to the Mitten and I've been sick. I am not in top form. 

Well! It turns out that we are all too good at jabs, so we got to add crosses for a while, and all was well. I didn't even feel that excessively tired.

At the end, we do conditioning for five or ten minutes. I don't mind conditioning. I like the fact that I am working my body hard, which is not something I get to do in my work day. And I'm there for the exercise, after all.

If given a choice, I always start with the burpees. Mostly because I hate burpees, and I'd rather get them out of the way at the beginning.

So I started with the burpees, and then I did the kicks and the punches and the lifting the heavy bag and then the stair-step where you go side to side, stepping up in the middle. I was halfway through the rotation.

When the buzzer went off, I took an elegant little sideways leap off the stair-step, excited to start the station where you throw down the weight ball as hard as you can, and I landed directly on the outside front part of my ankle and collapsed onto the floor. 

The guys in the cage with me (the class was all guys today except me) crowded around and asked if I was okay, and I said I was fine except maybe I wasn't going to get up yet.

I wasn't really fine. I was talking to prevent the involuntary tears. 

I sprained my ankle really badly about 13 years ago, working with kids. One of the kids ran away, and I ran out to the street looking for him. When I didn't see him in either direction, I went sprinting back toward the workplace, hit the edge of a pothole in a parking lot, and went down hard. I don't think my ankle ever returned to its previous un-swollen size, and it's been vulnerable ever since.

But it hasn't been this bad since, either.

So I'm thinking it might have been a mistake to ride my bike to work after a couple of weeks off and being sick in between and go all out in fighting class after a couple of weeks off and being sick in between. It could have happened anyway, I know, but I can't help but feel that exhaustion contributed.  

I stood up and did the weight ball station, but the rest of the stations involved putting weight on both feet, and I couldn't.

I skipped out on what would have been my first sparring class, because it just hurt too much. 

"If it were anyone else, I would have thought they were just trying to get out of conditioning," my coach said, but he knows me better than that. 

The walk to the car had me in tears. Putting weight on my foot was unbearable. 

I sat in the car for a minute, trying to figure out how I would possibly use that foot to push the gas and brake pedals. If I didn't drive a stick, I would have considered trying to use my left foot for those pedals, but I needed my left foot for the clutch.

At least it wasn't my left foot, I consoled myself. I don't know if I could have driven home if it was my left foot. The clutch needs more pressure than the gas or brake.

My driving might have been a bit erratic. It's very difficult to apply steady pressure to a gas pedal when any motion but a 90 degree angle hurts your ankle so much that you cannot tolerate it.

I am icing it right now, but the current status is that I can stand on it as long as the pressure is applied straight down. Any turning or twisting or extending causes gasps of pain.

I am displeased with myself and also with this below-average to mediocre day.

colors

GUYS! 

I got my first stripe on my glove in stand-up fighting, and I got promoted to the non-beginner class.

My instructor used the words, "good all-around fighter" in his little promotion speech.

It's funny, because when I first started fighting stuff, the belt/promotion concept terrified me. There is a reason I started with a program that has no belt but black. I didn't want to have to test. I didn't want to be judged and found lacking, I suppose.

Now I love the rankings. I don't love them because they prove one person better than another. I love them because they give you something to mark your progress. 

I don't need to have a black belt right this second, or even a blue belt, but it feels good to be able to say, "I worked hard, and I got better, and I earned the color I"m wearing around my waist."

student

On the train, riding out of downtown toward my martial arts studio, I thought about how much I love this city.

I love the blunt, graffiti-ed back sides of buildings against the train tracks.

I love the way the clouds hang over the bridges.

I love the crowds on the train.

I love the familiar smell of my martial arts studio.

For the first time, waiting for class to start, I looked around the studio and felt at home.

It isn't the same as my Universe City studio. That was my introduction to martial arts, and it cannot be replaced. I feel a fierce loyalty to the people there that goes beyond just a gym. And there is something special about it, too: the kung fu bow when you step onto the floor and when you leave, the counting in unison, the instant focus when the instructor starts talking, the cheering each other on, the way the whole class yells responses. ("Ready?" "READY!")

But this one is starting to feel like me, too, in a different way. This gym is younger, on the whole, and more casual, and the people in it go out to watch fights together. They have a permanent table at the Mexican restaurant around the corner. They feel like people I might end up keeping as friends outside the world of martial arts.

BJJ class was good, and afterwards we lined up again. We only really line up at the end of class when there is something to be given out - a belt, a stripe, something, and I look forward to seeing who gets something. Someday I even hope it will be me! (Okay, it was me a few weeks ago when I got promoted to the non-beginner class in bjj. Someday I hope it will be me again!)

Okay, it was me.

Remember how I was all embarrassed when I got student of the month in Universe City?

I am student of the month here now, and I feel almost more embarrassed. Student of the month is for kiiiids. Give it to a kiiiiid.

And it feels a little excessive to be student of the month in two studios in two different cities, albeit two years apart.

At the same time, as I tried to explain to my roommate, I work hard at martial arts. It's kind of my thing. I am there every single time I am allowed to be. School may have always come easily to me. You may find me surfing the internet on the weekend when I should be cleaning the house. But when I go to fight, I am all focus. I watch carefully and I imitate and I practice and I get better. I am that annoying person who shushes other students when they try to keep talking over the instructor, who dances around cheering people on at the end of class when we are all exhausted, who is told to start at the second step, or the third step, because I clearly need to work harder.

It's nice to have other people recognize how hard you work. Apparently both the stand up and jiu jitsu coaches agreed.

I got a bumper sticker, and a set of patches to put on my gi, and there is a plaque in the studio with my picture on it.

All of this gave me the courage to ask a coach to roll with me. I haven't dared before, because no one looked available, but I really wanted to try it, so I finally braved it, and it was so fun! She went easy on me, of course, but I wasn't instantly defeated. It was fantastic. I love this stuff.

seminar

We had a bjj seminar today, to learn guard-passing. The guard is where the person on the bottom has their legs between them and the person on top. Basically, if you are on top, you are trying to get to the person's side, past their legs. 

I did not actually know how long this seminar would be. I arrived stocked with snacks and drinks, just in case, only we never got a break long enough to do more than snarf a few nuts or gulp some water.

The seminar was three hours long, on a warm sunny day, inside the hot warehouse, wearing thick cotton gis.

By the last half hour, my drilling partner, a woman whose age I will not hazard to guess (I am bad at this, but she is older than me and probably younger than my mom) gave up. I went and drilled with her husband instead. His partner had to leave early.

I ended up with that sick dehydration feeling. If you don't know that feeling, you either don't work out much, you know your limits, or you are significantly better than I am at staying hydrated. 

I drank two glasses of club soda with raspberry at the Mexican restaurant a block over, and then I went for 24 ounces of iced tea at my tea place, and still I am dehydrated.

Mid-dehydration, I stopped at 1ke@ to check out their damaged section. I needed a chair for my office, and I needed one on the cheap, due to being (constantly) broke. I sat for a while in a rocking chair that I quite liked, but I ended up buying a bright blue cloth chair that is probably intended for a kid's room. It is less hard on my still-damaged tailbone, and it was cheaper. 

I also bought a footrest. Now I shall be able to lounge in my office, should I have time for lounging, ever.

yellow x 2

Let's put it this way: last night, I fell asleep at 8 pm, and after I got up at 10:30 and washed my face and brushed my teeth, I fell immediately right back to sleep and slept until almost 9 am. I feel like I could do the same tonight.

Something has to give.

The one thing I don't want to be the thing to give is my fighting classes, which are still at four days a week (soon to go to three longer classes).

Oh! This week, I got promoted in Brazilian jiu jitsu. I am now allowed (as soon as I procure myself a gi - I just ordered the black one from this page) to attend the non-intro class. And I believe that when I get a belt (I haven't needed one yet, due to not having a gi, and they were out of them on Thursday when I got promoted), it will have color on it. 

I realize that it's not that impressive to have yellow belts in two martial arts (kung fu and BJJ), but it feels impressive to me. It's funny how I am somehow more proud of my accomplishments in martial arts than pretty much anything else in life. 

I think it's partly because I have always been that tall, clumsy girl. If there is a thing to run into, I will run into it. I warmed the bench for three years in high school soccer. When I tried zumba, I was that overly-tall person out of sync in the back row. Coordination has never been my thing.

Then I found martial arts, and suddenly I can do a sport. Part of it is sheer stubbornness. If you are willing to keep slugging a heavy bag and holding a piece of paper between your elbows to train your muscles to keep them in tight against your body and being corrected over and over, you will get better. 

I am willing to do all that, and I love it.

BJJ is a little bit different. I started BJJ because I loved the ground survival section of my fighting class in Universe City. BJJ is rolling around on the floor, trying to be the person on top. One of my grappling partners one day said, "I think this is the move we did the first class I took, and all I could think was, "I don't even know this person, and here I am in a baby-making position with them.""

Which is true. If you are the sort of person who is going to be bothered by the fact that you are kneeling on the ground with a stranger's hips up against yours and their feet locked behind you, you will hate BJJ. I am pretty unperturbed by that situation, so it suits me. 

The reason why I think I'm going to be decent at BJJ is that same sheer stubbornness. I'll tap if my bone is going to break from an arm bar or I'm going to go unconscious from a choke, but if there is a way to squirm my way out of a situation, I will do it. It might not be the way we learned in class, but I will persist until I have gotten out. I may never win competitions (competitions are not my goal, anyway), but I find fighting my way out incredibly fun.

good ache

I finally pestered my new martial arts studio into letting me do standup fighting as well as Brazilian jui jitsu, and now it's on. I'm back. 

It was killing me to sit there on the floor, learning how to get six points in a BJJ match when I could be punching things. 

"You aren't going to be in [the beginner] class long," the instructor said after the hour wrapped.

Which is probably good, because the novelty of being back in a standup class may only last so long if every class is an hour of just jabs and then just crosses and then just jabs and crosses. I didn't even get to do any combinations or kicks or or or. But it's coming. And it feels so good to move and punch and dodge and cover up.

I haven't worn the boxing gloves in three months, though, and what used to be easy is now heavy. 16 ounces is a pound on each hand, held up to my temples. My arms ache, and my shoulders, and also my legs from the fighting stance. It's a good ache. I feel like I worked hard for the first time since I left Universe City.

ouch

The gun disarm we were doing in fighting class tonight wrenched my poor wrist in an awful way. "Careful with the wrist!" I kept saying, but none of the guys were careful enough. It was all guys plus me tonight, and guys think they are being careful, but they are not. 

By the time we started the exercise-while-being-hit portion of the evening, I had to opt out of burpees. My wrists would not stand for that. 

The instructor, however, would not stand for my not doing anything to provide stress before I did the disarm. Instead of burpees, I ran back and forth across the room while the guys whacked at me with pads and their hands. 

"Bet you wish you were doing burpees right now," someone said.

I didn't, actually. I never wish I was doing burpees right now. Ever. Not even as an alternative to sprinting across the floor.

I will probably be sleeping in my arm brace tonight even without the burpees.

crunch

I decided this morning to start doing 100 crunches a day. 

For fun, obviously. As one does. 

And to see if crunches alone, even a variety of crunches as I fully intend to do because repetition is boring, can actually make any difference in ab definition. 

It's January. It still gets dark early. I have to find some way to pass the time.

I had 60 crunches in when I went to advanced fighting class, and by one time around the workout circuit the instructor designed, I had 100 in plus 16 with an exercise ball.

I realized my mistake when the instructor then added a whole bunch of bicycle crunches to the next time around the circuit.

96 bicycle crunches and 16 exercise ball crunches later, I am going to have difficulty sitting up tomorrow. 

Which is fine. The importance of sitting up is vastly over-estimated in life. 

Maybe I'll move up to 200 crunches a day.

It's been over a month since I worked out on a regular basis (thank you Christmas, also sinus infection), and I am back at that awesome place where you can feel muscles you forgot you had: forearm muscles, for example. My forearms hurt.

I really do love my fighting class.

[7] clavicle

Two nights ago, at fighting class, we were practicing tackles. When someone tackles you low and fast, you are supposed to sit back, catch your leg around theirs, use your momentum to flip to the side, and come out in a full mount (still cannot help giggling over that term like a 13 year old).

We do the tackle technique on an extra set of padding, for obvious reasons. 

The former Marine, my friend A., was the tackler when I was the tacklee, but he caught his feet on the edge of the mat, and instead of tackling my legs, he just sort of fell on top of me. All 180 or 200 pounds of him, directly on my clavicle.

I finished the scenario, pushed off his chest with both hands, and stood up, and only then did I realize how very difficult it was to breathe. 

That hurt. 

I was pretty okay by morning, but all day yesterday when I sat wrong or tried to take too deep a breath, it hurt again. Apparently you need chests in order to breathe? Strange. 

We sat around at work today trying to find all the legal liabilities for tackling someone and injuring them in a martial arts class. Civil? Criminal? Torts? Negligence? Reasonable standard of care in the situation? My clavicle became our own little law school class. If I ever become a law professor, the clavicle is going to feature prominently. 

exhaustion

I never considered skipping advanced fighting class, but I did realize on the way there how very tired I was. Lifting my arms seemed like it would take effort. (It did take effort. Noticeable effort.)

I had a long, hard day. I need a vacation after just yesterday and today. 

But I went to class anyway (I was four blocks away from class when I realized how tired I was), and whoa. I started out tired, and I ended up mushy like jello. Halfway through, I wasn't sure that I actually was capable of one more round kick.

I didn't have much of a choice, of course. It was kick another round kick - and another - and another - or look like a wimp. We are not wimps in fighting class. 

I kicked, and I punched, and I knife-sparred, and my only injuries are a cut on my lip and multiple bruises beginning on my knife hand. So a good class, really.

Now if only I could get up and get ready for bed. Sitting here thinking how tired I am isn't helping.

defense

In advanced fighting class last night the instructor was demonstrating what not to do when overcoming a choke from the side. 

I put my hands around his neck and he demonstrated the incorrect move.

I took advantage of the moment to grab his chin, spin him around, and bend him backwards with my other hand on the small of his back. I could have dropped him on his head, and he had no balance to counteract it.

When I let him stand straight again, he said that was exactly why one does not do the move incorrectly. 

"You used to be nice," he joked.

"I used to be vulnerable," I said. 

It's true that I am physically less vulnerable than I used to be. Knowing that I can probably defend myself if I should be attacked (at least enough to stay alive) (assuming no weapon is involved) is a really good feeling, and I walk taller down the street because of it. 

power

The massage therapist I saw on Monday also practices martial arts, and he asked me what I thought was the most important thing in martial arts.

"Your mind," I said, which is what we learn at the studio where I practice. 

"The most important physical aspect," he said.

"Okay, your core," I said, recalling all the times my instructors have smacked me in the stomach and told me to tighten my core for better precision or balance or force.

"I think it is power," he said.

Hm. We may attend different sorts of studios.