Gun Tuesday

I felt charged. Watching the grading over the weekend after a joint agreement with my Sensei not to grade reaffirmed my beliefs that I am ready for grading. After seeing the grading from the seated perspective I realised what the Sensei are looking for and how frustrating it is for them so see poor form. I have always been a firm believer in form over force and although some still taunt me about my earlier days with NSA I have out grown my once ridged and strained earth like movements and replaced them with the fluidity of water.

I saw a lot of earth in the grading and coupled with some fire it made for a rather interesting show, but with only one second and first kyu student impressing me I couldn’t help but feel a bit side-lined and left behind. Don’t get me wrong, the grading was a huge success in my eyes and with one new addition to the black belt corps I believe each and every student deserve the grades they got. Well done, all of you.

I got to the dojo early and worked on my nunchacu. My hands were more nimble now and I could feel the strain less flow of the flare and the deadly impact of the strike. I was once again a deadly ninja in the shadows and my foes dropped by the dozen as I swung the deadly weapon around my limbs and body.

I headed inside and decided to grab the shinai and do a bit of jousting. One of the junior students took up the challenge and we squared off. I felt a little more comfortable with my right foot forward and parried most of his strikes. I started looking for openings in his defence and strategies on how to get to them, but I still have a lot more to learn. I saw him getting tired and decided to call it a round.

We lined up and started warm ups. I had loads of energy and after a good stretch we did a couple of hand coordination drills. We did some bag work and I swopped left to right for each strike midway through the ten count in a bid to train both sides of my body. My partner commented about the power in my right palm heal, I smiled and struck him harder with my left elbow. We did some combination drills and I worked a bit on my one arm techniques.

We broke for water and I did some push-ups with my feet up on a stack of chairs. We broke up for syllabus work and I opted to be uke for a 6^th kyu. The Sensei brought a training gun and we settled in for the second half of sixth kyu. My partner was still green and conscious incompetence was written all over his face as we worked through “gun to the side of the body”. I gave him a couple pointers as we went along and he quickly adapted as he grasped the techniques.

We were starting to have fun as the sensei intervened and gave us a scenario where the assailant grabs the wrist while holding the gun against his chest. The idea was to combine the knife edge out of the grip while neutralising the danger of the gun in your opponent’s hand. I visualised the way I would shrink in fear before I attacked my opponent’s gun hand, but the translation didn’t quite hide my intention of attacking and my partner warned me that he could see that I wanted to attack. I tried again, I went to that place in-between time and reality where everything seemed to freeze frame and the world had no sound. I cowered into a deadly half crouch position as I drew my partner onto the void. A deadly explosion of speed surprised him so totally that we both remained suspended in time as I brought my knee up while I grabbed the gun against his shoulder.

I realised what had happened when he groaned in pain. My knee connected with its target. I apologised profusely and hoped that the damage wasn’t that bad. I did hold back, but he was still in a fair amount of pain, luckily it subsided quickly leaving only me feeling bad and incompetent for letting myself go just that little bit.

Embrace the shadows.