Speaking from experience, this crap hurts.

Unfortunately, any further forays into the educational arena of a karate dojo mat are going to have to wait until such time as I am able to get my body back to working the way it should be. Kind of ironic, really... I spent the past seven months working my little tail off, and getting in rather good shape. Except, apparently, I was not working out quite the right portion of my legs. That, and I have flat feet. And apparently my kneecaps are misshapen, but that was not the cause for this particular incident (but may prove to be an issue in the future). Did my warrantee suddenly expire or something?

11. Just as important as not cutting your fingernails too soon before judo, is actually cutting them. Not only can long fingernails be a problem for you (in that they are liable to catch on things and tear/rip off - an unpleasant experience, to put it simply), but they are almost more of a problem for your partner. Sadly, I realized that my fingernails were a bit on the long side on the way to class, and by then it was too late... Unfortunately, I happened to catch my partner with the corner of my thumbnail, and leave a nice little line on the side of her face - no blood, but very annoyed skin.

Never going to let that happen again.

10. Blocks should always be executed in such a way that will cause damage to the offending limb... however, just because your body does not take the hit, do not expect the block not to hurt. We did a bit of tae kwon do sparring today in class... the kinds of things I used to do at my old dojo, though this was just for the form of it - no contact, no pads, nothing but the movements. Well, despite all that, I still tend to block, and possibly a little proactively, and one good block just about rendered my left hand inoperable a few hours later. Still, despite all of the bumps, bruises, and missing skin, martial arts continue to be interesting, challenging, engaging, and one doozy of a workout. That, and I might just be a teeny tiny masochist inside...

9. Being choked-out into unconsciousness is a singularly unique experience. I have, to my knowledge, never passed out, blacked out, or lost consciousness (short of sleeping) before in my life. I have taken some pretty solid blows to the head (one resulting in 13 stitches - good fun), but thanks to a thick skull, none of them resulted in me going all cute birdies and shiny lights.

Well, today, we were practicing a variety of choke holds, with the big difference between these and the headlocks some of you put your siblings in when you were younger being that these were designed to cut off blood flow to the brain, but not make breathing particularly difficult. The premise is basically that the person is too busy fighting you off and thinking that you are failing at "choking" them to notice that they are suddenly unconscious. Well, after running through a gamut of the options available for making people pass out, the Master had a few of the more advanced students sit in front of us newbies, and he very carefully choked them until they just started to black out. After that, it was our turn.

The whole thing was very carefully executed and observed, so no worries on that count. I honestly tried to pay attention and see what would happen when... but about the time my brain started making pretty lights appear out of nowhere, I was already too gone to do a damned thing about it. I "woke" up with one of the blackbelts holding me upright, and my head bobbling like a gorramed wobbly-headed geisha doll. I fully recovered in about 30 seconds, but I have no doubt that if you held someone longer, it would be more of a problem.

Either way, damn that was wierd. And it sneaks up on you out of nowhere, that much is for certain.

This is just some further random information I garnered from our most recent experience at our martial arts dojo.

7. Bleeding on your gi is bad form. Like I mentioned in the last related post, I tore the hell out of my knees doing judo - most just your standard mat burn, but it is still missing skin, and humans tend to leak a little when they are missing skin. Needless to say, after this most recent round of judo, the knees of my new gi were... speckled. Thankfully, we have until this coming Monday off, so hopefully I should heal by then - or find a better way of bandaging my knees.

8. Try not to cut your fingernails too closely before engaging in grappling exercises. This kind of falls under the heading of the previous lesson, but is also avoidable in the future.

Aside from that, good fun, and definitely good exercise... something tells me we will be back next week.

One of the few advantages of being trapped out on the ocean for six-plus months at a time is that I had to work out... had scant else to do, and it is a fairly good use for your time. After all, it improves your strength, endurance, self-image, and all the rest of that nonsense you already know.

Now that I am back on dry land, however, something else always seems to take up the time that would otherwise be spent sweating and swearing. Better Half and I decided that we should do something to correct this, and have started an introductory package at a local karate school. I took tae kwon doe for about five years way back before and during high school, and Better Half took a few semesters of it during college, so we figured it was something we could do together. A few thoughts crossed my mind while we were out on the mat, though:

1. I am out of shape, despite all that effort I expended a few months ago.

2. Low stances are a workout all on their own.

3. I am really out of shape.

4. Judo is a beautiful workout, but is murder on the knees if you do not have pants on (I was wearing shorts at the time) and have never done it before in your entire life. See, when you only have one suitcase and one carry-on to pack everything you think you will need for the next sixty days into, workout pants, in the middle of summer, in Tennessee, are not one of those things. And, oh yes, I have gi pants now.

5. ... Yeah.

6. I certainly miss karate / martial arts, and hopefully we will be able to keep going. Sure, I mostly got dragged around the mat by the other people in the class (including a couple black-belts... those were definitely one-sided exchanges), but that is half of how you learn.

Hey, everyone needs to stay in shape, and killing two birds with one stone (by learning self-defense at the same time) seems like a reasonable deal to me.