Pain is a great teacher ... sometimes

Pain is a great teacher ... sometimes

Ah Wednesday weapons class at 9:30 am. I always look forward to it, but also with tepid fear brewing in my belly. I suppose this is because every Wednesday I manage to hit myself with a weapon. Yup. I'm a klutz. I may or may not secretly refer to weapons day as “head conditioning day” or “Try to stay conscious day”. Even stating this fact is a self fulfilling prophesy. I expect to hit myself, therefore I will. Even when I don't expect to hit myself I manage. Like today. I managed to strike myself in the back of the head yet again with my Bo. When I joked that I should wear a helmet my Instructor just laughed and told me that, “No I want you to hit yourself with it, it's the only way you learn not to.”. I wish i would learn this lesson at some time soon. But I will say, I can hit myself pretty darn hard and NOT drop my weapon. Obviously my dislike for pain our weighs my dislike for push ups.

After working with the bo for a while, we switched it up and practiced our Sinawali with our Kali. (2 handed techniques with sticks). I was doing okay until we started doing self defense with one stick. I love self defense. I had bare hands and he had a stick. I was doing okay until I went to lock him into an arm bar and whilst dropping his arm into position I forgot that I had feet and to get out of the way and managed to bring the ponyo on the sweet spot between the base of my skull and my neck. I had him, he couldn't go any where and I managed to hit myself in the head with his weapon! I saw grey. The next thing I knew he was doing push ups. I thought it was odd that he was doing push ups for me hitting myself with his weapon, until it was explained to me that he was doing push ups from dropping his weapon earlier. (I had knocked his weapon out of his hand by mistake when he wasn't ready.) So we tried it again. This time I managed to strike myself flush on the back of the head. I guess my instructor got sick of me trying to knock myself out and stepped in and corrected me. Thank goodness, because I am not sure how long I would have hit myself with my opponents weapon until I figured it out myself.

Later on in the class we did some flow self defense. My partner could come at me with any strike and I would have to defend myself. I actually managed to impress myself. Suddenly I remembered that I had feet and threw a few really well placed kicks in my self defense

in combination while locking up his weapon. That in it's self is pretty amazing because of MS I really tend to shy away from my legs. Perhaps all I need to kick myself into gear is to whack myself a few times with a stick to the head. But the bonus to hitting myself in the head so many times is I'm fairly confident that I have a hard head. I'm awesome today because I have a hard head!