rockin’ my world or the topography of pain

last night at Martial Arts I learned the hard way to keep my guard up. By the hard way, I mean that I got caught by a great cross/hook combination. We were working on our boxing in preparation for our Shootfighting test. I was lucky enough to get to spar with our teacher, Coach James. Coach has been working on this for years and is a very competent boxer. He also hits like a ton of bricks. Things were going well at first (mainly ’cause he wasn’t throwing punches). But after the first minute or two my hands started to get real heavy and began to drop. Suddenly he was on top of me with a flurry of punches. Uggg… A rising cross slipped through and popped me up. And just as I started to trip over my back leg (I think my body was trying to take me into a defensive roll… which also ain’t kosher in boxing but is ok in Kung Fu) *BANG* the lead cross connects with the right side of my head on the cheek bone. That reset me like a nintendo. It didn’t knock me out, but it took me half a sec to get myself back together. Suddenly it hit me “hey… I’m not standing up… wind is rushing by me… oh, I’m falling… that’s not good.” Thankfully I was in mid fall and managed to keep my head tucked (so I didn’t brain myself on the floor). Even more thankfully, Coach stopped me from getting up. I would have kept sparring, but I had no problem lying there, counting ceiling tiles, for a minute or three. Basically the entire experience reminded me that I don’t like getting hit (especially when it’s hard) and to keep my guard up.

I still made it through Kung Fu. Man, I was pulling 101 monkey moves outta my butt while sparring my classmates. Then it was time to work with Sifu. And once again I got schooled, which is all good and extremely frustrating at the same time. Mainly because I was focusing on one aspect of what I was doing so intently that it blinded me to other options. I had good root and intention, but not creativity or multiple attack angles in what I did. Grrrrrr. On the plus side the fact that he’s been upping the ante the last few times we sparred is a good sign. Now what I really need to do is carve out more time to practice outside of class.

Otherwise, I’m off to see another play tonight and continue to work out our plays. We had a good meeting yesterday with the Rochester Arts Council, including learning that they may be able to help us with getting funding while we wait for our non-profit status to come through. And that’s all good.