cindy's world

A fellow classmate gave me a CD-ROM of jujitsu photos. I didn’t even know when some of these photos were taken. I figure since I write so much about jujitsu, I may as well share some of these images with you. Please keep in mind that these photos appear to have been taken the 2nd week of class, and I had just gotten my gi and hadn’t washed/preshrunk it yet, so it’s oversized. Or maybe there’s a reason why my class nickname is “the little one.”

“Josh, you’re doing the arm-bar shoulder throw,” said the instructor. “Cindy, slap him.” Oh, how nice.

There’s me. Being shoulder-thrown after a blocked slap.

We did free sparring today. I lined up with the instructor, got a few good hits in, he got a few good kicks and hits on me, and after a few rounds, I went in for a low punch, made the mistake of ducking my head doing that, and he grabbed the back of my head and pushed my head downward. “What’re you gonna do now?” he challenged. I did a front kick straight up and the back of my foot met with his left cheek. I dropped my foot but in my shock and horror at making this contact with his face, I just froze, wide-eyed, with my hands around my open mouth, and barely managed to gasp out “I’m sorry!” before I fell backward on my ass, having forgotten to regain my balance.
He at first looked shocked himself. “I didn’t expect you to be able to kick that high!” he said, and then he looked so proud.
“I thought you’d dodge it!” I declared accusingly.
He came up to me a few times after that in private and kept giving me props on my seeing an opening and taking it and getting the hit in, but I still feel bad.
Funny thing about backs – just when you think it’s healed, you fall on it a few times (unsuccessful jump kicks when the opponent’s captured my other heel in his hand) and now it’s giving me the sharp pains again. Oomph.

I think I AM making progress in jujitsu, despite what my bruises and missing hunks of flesh seem to say about me. There were some new people in the class last nite and I found myself giving them instructionals and quick tutorials as we were going up for a throw or a spar against each other. I have a natural “teacher” in me, but it’s that I felt competent enough to pass on some knowledge that I was kinda surprised about. We learned a few new defensive-turned-offensive moves which ended with arm bars placed on the attacker, and as I was watching 2 people in my sector practice this move, the main instructor walked up to me and said discreetly, “I want you to learn some of these moves for use in competition.” Well, I have a year. Should be no problem. I haven’t even been in class a month yet and I’ve already got some moves I could do in my sleep.

Sunday afternoon, I went to the Shoshin Ryu Region 1 Kata Contest that 2 teams from my jujitsu dojo were competing in. I’m so proud of them – they competed as green belts (they were initiated green belts just before the contest) against brown belts and took away first and second place in the adult division. It was fun to see what the competition is like. They were egging me on to compete for next year.

I took a bunch of photos, but here’s my beef with the digital camera. 1.) The delay between clicking and the actual photo taking is over a second, and by then the move’s already done and I ended up with a bunch of photos of them getting up from a fall, not of them in mid-air. 2.) I put in fresh batteries when I got to the site, and 38 photos later, I was running out of juice and the battery symbol was flashing. 3.) It takes too long for the flash to recover in between shots. Not that the flash works well anyway; it barely illuminates to the middle of the gym.

As I was driving out after the contest, I got a call from my instructor asking me to join the other instructors for an In-N-Out burger. I was craving In-N-Out because I saw a bailiff walk in with it at lunch last week, so how could I resist? I am now so bloated that it looks like I have puffy ciabatta bread dough wrapped around my lower abdomen.

I’m beat up and have acquired new bruises, swellings and scratches, but I really enjoyed jujitsu today. I find it remarkable that the other white belts (who don’t have blackbelt ego but are advanced enough to have stuff to teach me) can do the whole full-body contact without feeling self-conscious or letting any sort of tension get in the way. One guy who was practicing for a competition this Sunday told me a story after class about how even tho his buddy is bigger and stronger than he is, that despite his injured elbow he was able to get his buddy into a submission hold half the time when they’re wrestling because of his more polished martial arts techniques. He started describing one foothold ‘trick’ that I couldn’t understand, so he showed it to me. He got on his back with his knees up, opened his legs, and told me to get on top of him. This was slightly uncomfortable, but then I’m not as deep into the martial arts mentality as he is. He clearly has no problem with this. So I did it and he demonstrated the leg lock and showed me how if I try to punch him (which I did), he could with very little strength yank me off balance downward (which he did), or push me over (which he did), and there’s nothing I could do about it or to even get up (which I tried to do and failed). He had me turn and look at the hold of his legs wrapped around mine, and the location of his feet around my ankles. And it was purely educational. There’s none of the winks and grins that the blackbelt did to me even on Monday. (Of course, my cold reception toward it on Monday made the blackbelt way more business-oriented around me today. Not stiffly since the whole class still jokes around and stuff, but it’s more platonic.)
As everyone was walking out after class, the instructor said in a year he was going to have me in competitions and I should start practicing now with that goal in mind. I looked dubious and one of the more skilled guys (who had taught me a lot) said that I have nice hip-throws. I was shocked. I said I couldn’t lift anyone in the class. Then they all looked surprised. They said I could, and my positioning on the hip throws is good. Maybe they’re just yanking my chain so I’d continue with the class, I dunno.

I almost got into 2 or 3 auto accidents today. Normally I’m a very defensive driver and have avoided many accidents that I know other drivers, had they been in my place, would’ve plowed into. But today, I would “wake up” right after a near-miss, and it’s to the credit of everyone else that I haven’t added any new dings to my car.

At jujitsu earlier, I slammed hard onto the mat right into my injured right knee. Good thing I waited an extra day before coming back or that would’ve been one of those horrible semi-permanent injuries. (A heavy-set new guy didn’t know to let go of my gi when he hit the floor and yanked me down and forward and I had to fall on my knee to avoid kneeing his kidney.)

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I knew something was up the way the universe was trying to slow down my drive all day. Driving to work in the morning, I hit 36 out of 38 possible red lights. Same thing with driving home after work, and driving from home to jujitsu.

Good thing about jujitsu today (aside from the fact that the blackbelt wasn’t there), there was another older blackbelt instructor who is much more technical in his teaching. We split the class in half and one worked on throws and falls and the other worked with the new instructor on drilling blocks, kicks and hits. Yes, we got the full breakdown of each movement. I raved to the regular instructor after class about how helpful that was, and how I had no idea what I was doing until I got the basics explained to me. He seemed happy about my feedback and said he’s gonna have that instructor back for that purpose for us.

A friend/coworker who is a blackbelt who trained under Chuck Norris (before Chuck became a celebrity) and frequented different schools/studios to study a variety of martial arts told me today about a counter-culture of martial arts. Apparently it’s a very common thing for blackbelts to hit on and pick up on female martial arts students, and there is a market of female “blackbelt groupies.” My friend said he’s seen this in virtually all the studios he’s been in. Guys even say things like “I’m right about to get my black belt. Then I’ll be getting all these women.” And there are women in these studios who have slept with most of the blackbelts there. Ew. And here I thought that the people I’d meet in martial arts would be nice people because no one expects hot feminine women to be taking martial arts so picking up women can’t be the guys’ motivation for attending the class. Armed with this knowledge, however, I felt empowered and liberated as I drove to jujitsu. As another friend suggested, I am just gonna step back and watch the train wreck that’s about to happen between the new girl and the blackbelt.
The class was totally different for me today because of my new nonchalance. I was more easy-going, more open, and made a bunch of new friends. I think I shall go to the September convention in Arizona. In our after-class discussions today, it looks like it’s going to be a co-ed hotel room situation between me, the new girl (who I now get along with because I no longer care about the competition), an intermediate level Japanese guy named Josh (who tried to talk to me yesterday but of course my head wasn’t in it then), and another intermediate level guy named Gerardo. I had a really good time chatting and sorta hanging out w/these 2 guys today throughout class. From the bits and pieces I observed, it didn’t look like the blackbelt appreciated my new friendships. He ignored me unless he was dealing directly with me (like during grappling), and if we had to deal with each other, he’d throw liners at me like “Don’t worry, you’re safe with me.” At one point he touched the side of my neck with his fingertip and said, “Oh, you’ve got a pretty bad burn there.” I shrugged. When I got home, I looked in the mirror and the burn must’ve totally and completely healed itself. It was all pretty laughable.
Oh yeah. And I led the class again on abs, and was happy to see that the 3 new ab exercises I added in were strains to them. Brave class, tho. They are very gung-ho about a good strenous workout.

I knew I shouldn’t have finished that margarita. I was more vulnerable to alcohol because of the 3+ mile run I did at lunch and I didn’t eat much all day. I got a headache that I’m even now still experiencing.

I made it to class early so that I could change into workout clothes. I’ll admit that a vain part of me did want certain people to see what I look like as a girl, and altho certain people were not in the classroom when I first poked my head in wearing a short skirt and heels, I ran into certain people on my way to the restroom to change. Certain people recognized me first and greeted me and I got to show off the 2 huge bruises on my left knee and shin, which certain people helped make. Gawd, I think I just gave too much away. Mental note: don’t give certain people this blog addy.

Teaching the ab portion was fun. I only had them do 1 set (20 reps) each of like 7 ab exercises. I fully planned to hit 40 reps, but quite a few of them were gasping and struggling already. The time worked out pretty well so that I ended at 7:29 (the instructor had said these warmups stop at 7:30 sharp). The students and instructor were very complimentary, about the effectiveness of the exercises, about my explanations of what each exercise worked as I went along, about my emphasis on proper form.

Then my day went downhill from there. I had forgotten what it was like to suck at something. When I look back, there really isn’t any activity I had failed to succeed in. Some things were more effortless than others, but if I wanted to do something or learn something, it was done. And most things WERE effortless. Today, with the skin torn off my knuckles as I was thrown again and again, my seeming inability to rise to the challenge or even progress beyond the last in the class was very discouraging. The students were great; they would give me tips and teach me as I did the exercises against them so it’s not just the instructors giving the directions. However, I just felt utterly un-adept. I would blank out and not remember what I was doing; the cognitive skills were fried and of course I haven’t developed an instinct to work off of yet; I had short-term memory problems such that I could not remember what station to go to or what action is being performed or received at each station. The new girl seemed to have flown way past me (altho I did learn today that she had previously taken some form of kung-fu or something because I asked her where she got her uniform) and one-on-one with her, she threw me way more times than I would’ve preferred. I’m gonna lie to myself right here and say she had an advantage over me being like 7 inches taller than me and outweighing me.

And it bugged me to not be in the limelight of the “new girl” title anymore, too. I so enjoyed the novelty-worship the class gave me the last 3 days. I feel like she and I are too similar and she’s in my space (socially). If I got into it more than that on here people would start losing respect for me (more so than they have already anyway). I feel pathetic and yet blue. But I did try very hard to be nice to her and she was nice in return.

Yesterday evening at jujitsu, the instructor discreetly confirmed that I will go in today to do the abs drill, then when we were all doing warmups, he announced to the nearly 30-member class that there will be a “guest instructor” for an abs drill the following day and they should all be there, but they should take care not to eat beforehand or they’ll have a pizza party (vomit on the mats). That seemed to scare some people off so he said, “No, she’s not gonna be that tough. She’s a short girl [extending his arm to chest-high], she’s like my granddaughter’s height.” Our eyes met briefly and I gave him a dirty look. “She’s shorter than everybody,” he continued. One student asked, “Is it Rebecca?” “No, it’s not Rebecca,” he said. Then later, he said across the mat to his son (blackbelt assisting him in class), “Have you figured out who it is yet?” His son asked, “Is it an old student?” “No, it’s someone new. Brand spanking new.” He touted it over and over that now I’m thinking, “What if I can’t give them an effective enough workout? Or what if I’m TOO hard on them?” Ack.

I have panty-trim fabric burns, workout bra-trim fabric burns, a bruise on my left shin, a mat burn on my left knee, a swollen right fleshy-part-of-thumb/palm, bruise on my right upper wrist, sore right forearm, and what appears to be a spread-out, gargantuan hickey on the inside of my right forearm with a black bruise beginning to form underneath. Am I whining? Haels no. I’m BRAGGIN!

The smaller intermediate jujitsu class yesterday consisted of all guys, plus me. I felt horrible that I was slowing them down on the drills, but they were all very good about it and gave me pointers on how to fall and hit and block, where to grab, how to roll them off my back and hip. I tossed a few guys and got tossed myself. The instructor incidentally discovered an aggression button of mine when he felt I was being too mild on defending the attacks: he told me to get back at all men. As each of the guys came up to me in a line of right and left punches, I smack-stopped the punches with the back of one hand, punched their extended bicep with my free hand, did the same with their other arm, threw the heel of my hand into their face and stepped into a hammer on their crotch in quick succession. The instructor looked so proud. I’m leading the class on a crunches drill this Thursday.