Impossible Thursday

It’s turning out to be one of the worst winters I have ever seen, everyone is sick and it seems almost impossible to stay on course with my training, but this is the essence of learning the art of Ninjutsu, for only through solitude, perseverance and determination can one hope to achieve such an impossible goal...

I had to tear myself away from my family while they were having dinner. I could almost imagine how the ninjas of old must have felt when they left their families to go on a mission. The thought that they might never see each other again burned like a hot coal in my belly as I tried to put myself in their shoes... but I started to feel better as I took my bokken out the back seat and faced my mission for the night. Train like my life depended on it, sweat like it was summer and become the ninja once more.

We started off as usual with the plank, but my gut felt weaker than normal, the long cold has taken its pound of muscle and I couldn’t train as hard as I would have liked to in the last few weeks and I felt it even more in the body conditioning. The Sensei used me as his uke as usual and the knee strikes hammered my intestines. I only had breath for ten slow push-ups halfway through class where I normally go for twenty, but I pushed myself and grit my teeth. This weekend I will be on full steam.

We broke up into our groups and I told my partner I want to do knife. I wanted to get the basics down in my head once and for all so that I can start working on them in my own time at home. We focused on blocking and taking the knife from the attacker. Some of the moves seemed quite helpless against and attacker, but if they are all you have, it would be better to at least try and master them and that is exactly what we did. We hit each other as hard as we could to find out where the boundaries were and at the end of the session, we wanted more.

We closed with Kata Dante and then I had to run as I had a meeting thirty minutes later and as I had my dinner in front of the computer I couldn’t help but smile at how protected and “Safe” we are these days...

Embrace the shadows.