He's ok!!!

I attended class tonight. I was a bit late.

On my way in Sensei James was on his way out. I met him in the parking lot. He had some function he had to attend, he was dressed up for the occasion.

Sensei Peter was leading the class with the lower level people, like me. Peter's head is fine, it has some scabbing, but very little bruising and he was in high-spirits. This is something that makes me happy. I would have hated if I had hurt him severely.

When I walked in they were already working on breakfalls (ukemi) so I joined in. They were working on side ukemi and then changed to backward ukemi. My backward ukemi is apparently perfect so I received very little correction, and was used as an example of how to do the fall correctly.

Then we changed over to the ukemi I hate. Forward ukemi. You have to land on your palms first and then use your arm muscles to stop your elbows from smashing into the ground. This is done with the arms under the body, so that if you fail to stop yourself, your arms will absorb the shock before your body does. At the end of the ukemi your forearms, hands and toes are the only thing on the ground. The idea being that you keep your body off the floor so that if there were spikes or something you would not impale yourself.

Again, I was used as an example. However, this type of ukemi is painful for me. I have a rather nasty welt on my forearm from falling too many times.

We followed that up with exercises to strengthen our arms for the forward ukemi. Again, the welt was in the way so I did not do the exercises.

Then we started doing knife work in a circle. Everyone had a chance to slash each other up with a rubber weapon.

On my first go I went against a guy who has been there for about a year. Apparently, I was a lot "better" than him at this. He is a very strong guy. I have had a lot of bruises from him in the past. :-)

Anyway, on my next turn I was pitted against a blackbelt. That was fun. He was good, and is younger than me, but I did well against him. Actually, both of the blackbelts there were impressed with my knife fighting. . but I have never done any knife fighting training.

There was one point where the blackbelt against me and I tangled up and I threw him, hip tossed really, to the floor.

After class they were commenting on the things I did during the knife fighting. . . I have no recollection at all of doing what they said I did. They mentioned that I spun quite a bit. If I was blocked in one direction I would spin in the opposite direction in order to put the knife into a soft spot. I really do not recall doing that at all.

I have a few more bruises from this weekend, but it has been very fun, despite throwing Peter face-first into the floor. I am still learning a lot and enjoying the classes.

Peter also advised me to start practicing, and briefly showed me, more advanced ukemi.

I ended up with a bruised up shin, forearm and a little split on the inside of my mouth from knife-fighting with the blackbelt. Fun!