(no subject)

[j4]

Yesterday's martial arts seminar wasn't quite what I expected, but bits of it were still good. However I now ache from head to foot as a result of spending four hours carrying a heavy sword, and spending at least one of those hours running around with the sword.

All joints now fairly comprehensively knackered with various degrees of not-bending and swelling. Which made cycling into work something of a challenge (but still better than walking, which was the other option). And I couldn't find the Ibuprofen gel this morning, which enabled me to make the timely discovery that my arms react badly to Deep Heat. *itch*

Despite all this, today I have managed to:

- Get up in time to sort out parcels to post & make lunch
- Get into work in time to make coffee before 9am meeting
- Post item to one of my eBay buyers
- Post something else I promised to send
- Actually do some bloody work for a change :)

Comments

[silicon-lotus.livejournal.com]

I bet not everyone at that seminar was stiff and sore the next day.

You need to work on your warmup, and talk to your instructor about developing a more flowing and relaxed style. Jerky strikes are weak, as well as damaging to you.

Mind you, I'd admit to bias: my student days at karate were heavily influenced by earlier years in T'ai Chi - which is taught as it should be, as a martial art, in a few places outside London - and this helped me a lot. It made my karate 'stronger' than it would have been by muscular strength alone (you've seen me, you know I'm weedy) and I never walked off a competition mat with a sprain, a strain or a stretch. Some bruises, though, and no trophies.

Nowadays, a decade or so later, I practice Ki-Aikido and regularly attend all-day classes and seminars. Admittedly it's less physically punishing than Karate-do, and very much a nonagressive art, but it's still a 'full-contact' discipline. Some of the techniques were only practiced on condemned criminals in the good old days! A fact I've had cause to reflect upon, having been called as ukemi (extra opponent, required when there's an odd number of candidates or they can't pair up students from the same club) for gradings in almost every course I've attended this last year. I've come close to passing out through heat exhaustion a couple of times, but my first and only injury came on day three of this year's Spring Seminar: a stubbed toe. A record I hope to keep, as I'm up for the full two weeks of this year's Summer School.

Which is kind of a long way of saying that people who have a lot less muscle mass than you can train all day in a full-contact art and don't walk around groaning the day after.

Seriously, speak to your sensei: you can do better. Pain is a necessary part of what we do but physical damage is not, and should be regarded as evidence of failure in technique.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I don't get aches as bad as this after karate seminars, or after sensible sword seminars where we actually work on the technique of different cuts, rather than charging around in a shambolic simulation of "battle".

What really did for me was running up and down the hall for so long. (Samurai-style running, at that.) Normally I don't run; it's a crap form of exercise, it's no fun, and it's buggering hell on the joints. I wasn't expecting to have to do it, & I didn't get a choice about it. Three hours in the car afterwards didn't help, either; muscles just seize up. (Didn't get a choice about that, either, unless I wanted to stay in Winchcombe for ever.)

And I don't particularly like being told I'm a failure for feeling achey after a long training session.