Belt Tuesday

My head was still a bit fussy from the cold I have been struggling to overcome, but I decided that I had to go to class. The other students seem to have befallen the same ill fortune and with only four other students we hit the deck like one man and set in motion another vigorous training session filled with pain, sweat and humility.

I took stretches and made sure every muscle got a turn. I noticed the night before that my splits were getting lower and earlier the previous week that I can kick quite a bit higher. The stretching is starting to pay off and after three years of pain I have definitely increased my flexibility and agility to a degree. My kicks have become more powerful from kicking the bag and my arms have become stronger from all the push-ups, but yet I felt a little out of sorts in class.

I trained with a 9^th kyu student. I experimented a bit on the bag with different hand strikes as we were ordered to strike the bag as much as we can for 30 seconds. I have been practicing the Eskrima Heaven and Earth drill on an old tire that I nailed to a tree and wanted to see if my hands speed and coordination has been affected. The Sensei didn’t like my form. I still need some work on the movements and focus of the strikes, but I feel that the transitions between my strikes were smoother and more effective than before.

With the rest of the bag work each one of us had a chance to pick a three strike combo but with four students it was over way too quickly. My partner seemed a bit bigger than me and more able to put force behind his strikes, but his performance was poor and un-trained. The Sensei came around every now and then and tried to offer some advice that might help improve his striking force. I came to appreciate again just how far I have come in the last three years. We each got a bag and we did a bit of Gauntlet work. I held back and tried to aim at my targets rather than strike to kill. We formed a circle and after each had a chance at striking from the middle we mixed it up a bit and spun the middle man around to add some disorientation to the formula.

We broke up into groups and I trained with another senior student. We did some Belt-work. He was very aggressive and I felt intimidated a couple of times by his force and aggression as he wrapped the belt around my head, neck and wrist. The belt is an interesting weapon and incidentally one that you will have on you most of the time. I experimented a bit and with some help and advice from the Sensei I got the basic hammer lock and figure four techniques right. The other student grabbed a knife and that is when it really became apparent to me… Your belt can be the difference between life and death when someone pulls a knife on you. The buckle is an obvious striking tool but it’s with the locking up and choking ability that the belt really shines and with a little creativity the opponent with a belt in his/her hands can really be a force to be reckoned with. The only real question I have at this stage about the belt is: Is it only good as a defensive weapon in the sense that you will use it to block a strike and then move over to offence or is there some form of offence that you can initialise with the belt and attack your opponent first hence keeping the initiative in a fight.

Embrace the shadows.