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Kung Fu

I have a test coming up next Saturday. It's a big deal because it is the only one that will happen for a year. It's funny because my teacher feels that testing is not really important and that the class should know who is the best. Yet the examination will be hard, long and thorough. He thinks it will take something like 5 hours to complete. It won't all be physical though. There is a written portion.

It's really unfortunate that I have had an injury. I was so strong just a couple of months ago. I could do more than 40 pushups at a time. I've had to give up training pull ups and pushups for my shoulder to heal better. Now I have a hard time doing 20. So there is part of the test that I will fail: push up hold. We have to hold a pushup in the down position for 30 seconds. There is no way I can do this. There are a couple of other shoulder intensive exercises, but I think I will be able to pull them off.

My goal: All of this week I am going to practice my forms in the morning. I'll only need to present two, but I want them to be excellent. So doing all my forms everyday will build up the cardio endurance. I will do some stance work, but I want to be careful not to over tax my muscles this week (outside of class at least). I need them to be fresh. A lot of the grit it takes to hold painful stances for long periods of time is mental anyway, that's what I need to train.

What I don't need to do is injure myself. I had this feeling today before heading off to class that I just shouldn't bring my sparring gear because doing so would tempt fate. I always get hurt so why risk it? But I didn't spar last weekend and I told myselft I could decide at the studio. Well of course I decided to go for it. And of course I got injured. There is a pulled muscle in the back of my neck from getting put into a guillotine choke.

It's so frustrating. I am mad at myself. I should have listened to my inner voice saying, "this is a bad day to spar. don't do it." But no. Before we even began I asked my teacher to go easy on me because I didn't want to injure myself before the test. This was probably even more of a jinx.

I tapped right away when he sunk in the choke, but my neck still got pulled like like a hank of taffy. I didn't know right away that I was hurt. It took a couple more punches to figure it out. I think adrenalin blocks all my pain. My teacher rubbed the muscle really well which helped a lot. Tiger balm helped too. Now I am going to ice it. I hope I am okay for weapons class tomorrow. I love stick fighting.

Comments

Uknitty said…
My b'f is a blue belt in BJJ. Personally I'm not in to participating in MMA (I'm a wimp heh) but quite often if he wants to try out a new move I get brought in as his grappling dummy ! Even thats enough pain for me ;)I prefer fencing personally , maybe I am just drawn to hobbies that require the use of sharp pointy objects !

Its rather odd reading a blog about knitting and MMA, I mean... the two subjects are commonly discussed around my place. (Well... I say discussed, closer to the truth would be I talk knitting and he smiles and nods... he talks armbars and I look vacant !)

I'm sending you good thoughts for your upcoming test. I'll check back to see how you get along.

C x
Miri Mack said…
Thanks so much for the thoughts!

Hee, hee, hee. I like pointy objects, too. From the moment that I saw Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, I knew that some day I wanted to be a gal that kicked some ass with a sword. And now I am on my way to becoming one. Kung fu is weaponlicious.

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