Archive: Torei-ni-n’gu mashou!
Source: Gisoku no Jutsu
Original post date: 22 February, 2007
It’s Thursday, which means its post-training round-up… or something 😛 Last night was a pretty small class for some odd reason – it wasn’t that hot (32 degrees C), and school’s back… so go fig. We had enough to make up the numbers, and everyone (even the kids) stayed for the whole session, which normally runs to just over an hour and a half. Since it had been two weeks since last training (owing to the fact I skipped last week’s class because I was spending the evening with Wifey), my stretching was a little sloppy and I couldn’t get my legs as close to doing the splits as I normally can; I’ll have to stretch a little over the next week to bring that back up to form methinks.
I noticed my kicks were either solid or a bit crap last night as well. My front kicks were going alright, but I found I wasn’t getting them consistently high and straight. That said, when I pulled it off I felt really good with how it went, but otherwise it wasn’t as good as I wanted. My round kicks were also a bit on the crappy side, but then again, they normally are – a good round kick requires a lot of work pivoting and shifting your weight/balance by using your foot/ankle/knee to control yourself. Obviously, given that I do all of that on what is pretty much a vertical pole attached to my hip on my left leg (remember I’m an above-knee amputee, not below-knee), it’s pretty hard to pull off an effective technique. Thankfully I make up for that when I kick with my artificial leg – Wifey, Hamez, Tank and a few others will remember that I tore apart my previous boxing bag by repeatedly kicking it with a special round-kicking technique I call ‘torquing’ (i.e. torque) my body in order to deliver an immense amount of power into a single kick. Wifey took a photo of the aftermath, so I’ll have to upload it when I get around to getting the film developed (this was before we got our digital camera, which was only last year :P).
Anyways, after the usual array of strikes, we went through a few combinations of guarding/attacking, and then spent time on kata. Sensei K is really keen on an April grading, so I spent some time with Sensei R going throw my saifa slowly, aiming to really work on perfecting my technique. I feel it getting stronger and stronger, which is really positive, though akin to my other training last night, my kicking wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. I guess that’s more reason to stretch a little over the course of the week.
Going over to the in-laws for dinner tonight, which’ll be great – am hoping to do another weights session with my father-in-law, and probably muck around with Hamez like we normally do. I daresay there’ll be some lounge-room open-hand sparring happening, and other random stuff. Should be good. Kinda like how my brothers (Miguel and Tank) and I end up play-fighting/sparring/backyard-cricketing whenever we catch up my parents’ place for dinner once a fortnight (though shouts out to Miguel and Janey – he’s recently moved interstate and his being his usual awesome self! Can’t wait to catch up next time you come down!!).
Next time I might go through some of the operations and stuff I’ve had over the years as an amputee as an aside, for anyone whose interested in what I had done over the years. As always, I’ll use some bizarre pseudonyms to cater for each doctor I can remember being involved in the event(s) in order to preserve the peace and ensure The Man doesn’t come after me with a pack of lawyers in tow 🙂
Oh, and before I go – cheers to Renny for adding my first comment & kudos to my blog! Thanks mate!
