Sunday, September 05, 2010

Training Log: Day 3

Did some stretching last night to alleviate the soreness in my quads. Should consider stretching multiple times a day, maybe sun salutations. Only got 3 hours of sleep last night and for some reason, I feel great. I'm sure if I got 4 hours, I'd feel like crap. Sleep is funny that way. It's all about timing.

If the soreness persists for a week then I'll have to push this cycle back to the 2nd half of October. Use it or lose it. At the molecular level, your body does just enough metabolizing to keep you running. Why maintain muscle fibers or protein isoforms that you aren't using? Well, muscles, you're all on notice....I need those fast twitch fibers for kicking and punching!

Crazy idea: was doing some Shi-Ho-Hai today, just fooling around, thinking about how the postures could be used and suddenly it came to me - tori with eyes closed, uke standing in front of him. Signal. Tori opens his eyes and Uke attacks. Tori only has the split second to react, tai-sabaki and strike. Kinda like ippon kumite except less to process because by the time you see what's happening Uke is already coming. Very quickly you get a sense of angles of attack and which way to move, perceiving eyes, shifting internally, moving to open space, moving at the last moment, moving as little as possible. But more than anything you face the fear - Uke could be anywhere. And that's the most important thing to overcome, that sense of blindness. Vulnerability. You open your eyes and uke is at your left...do you 1) sidekick to the left 2) yoko empi to the left 3) turn to your left and square up with him in a clinch or 4) drop and reverse to your right, sweeping the near leg.

The attack has to be of good quality. Punches and kicks have to be delivered properly, as if they were striking through your center axis. That gives the sense of closeness necessary. Obviously beginners would have Uke start a step or two back giving more time to react. Or conversely, beginners could have uke start with a lapel grab prior to striking.

The best part is you can't go early. You can't move before your eyes are open because you might be moving into the attack. You have to wait there, wait for that split second when he's either going to attack or not - wait and then explode. Sudden action. No right answer, just what comes spontaneously, how well you internalized the katas and can move off a spot, how empty your mind was, how instinctively you responded. Crispy, as Bruce Lee would say - a spontaneous, committed response to the unexpected. Brilliant!

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