Posted 11:18 PM by spitgirl
SUPER TRAINING

I suppose many of you have noticed that I haven't blogged in a few days. I was just down in Riverside performing at the Cali Hiphop Theater Festival, so I flew out Thursday morning (Wednesday's workout was sacrificed to applying for a job and my mom's birthday) and flew back on Saturday. I didn't do much Friday or Saturday except walk, but Thursday's workout was intense. I suited up in my electronic gear and went for a little jog around the university, thinking that I would make it 20 minutes. Well, 20 minutes switched to 30 minutes changed to 40 minutes and ended up being just about 50 minutes of jogging. It was really quite nice outdoors - the Santa Ana winds were running through the mountains, making the temperature closer to the high 70s, low 80s.

So regarding today... I didn't quite do a triple header, but it was close. Today was the seminar I was most looking forward to - the kicks workshop that Snehal put together. (I helped a little, mostly by contacting Dave. Contacting Dave is not a problem. Dave is easy to get a hold of. Dave is happy to teach. Dave's motorcycle broke down today.) So I showed up, and we bowed in with four people. Within a half an hour of warming up, we had 10 people and an instructor on our half of the mat. Wushu was hanging out in the mat as well - sigh!

Dave worked us through our paces, working on some finer techniques of TKD sparring kicks - rear leg roundhouse kick, fast roundhouse kick, and then combinations of the two - fast roundhouse rear leg roundhouse, then rear leg roundhouse rear leg roundhouse, then double roundhouse kick. We then spent some time working on spin heel/spin hook kick. Oh, but we were exhausted after working intensively with him for an hour and a half! But then again, we already knew that Dave rocks. He is, after all, a rock-climbin', swing dancin' , spinnin' goof of a 4th dan (in TKD).

After a brief respite, we were on the mat again, this time with a brief cardio warm up, some basic rolls, and then we pulled out the toys to start barrier rolls. If you don't know what a barrier roll is... imagine some kind of barrier. Can be human, can be air shields, can be chairs, tables, anything we have handy. Now jump over them and roll out of it. That's a barrier roll. We pulled out a "lane" in one of the mats to bare the wood below, and we started rolling. I mainly stayed with the lower barriers, making one trip on wood and a couple of trips of soft roll. (Well, not-so-soft roll.) I brought out a new toy - a little almost completely used up tape roll, which I placed on one of the barriers to snag as I went over. I had fun playing with that. Will have to try with cards or something - that's Dr. Link's little demo technique.

Afterwards, we started four rounds of more warming up - two of open free sparring, two of matwork, tick-tocking between the two. I sat out the first matwork round, preferring instead to stretch and watch. I sparred with George in the first open free sparring round, earning a nice whack in the back of the calf (it was somewhere between a bruise and a cramp, and it HURT when George was trying to massage it out). I got Ting for matwork, which was fun until she started pinching me again. Annnd I got Laura for the last open free sparring round, which was very humbling, to say the least. I got whacked in the shin and also probably lost my head and my knees multiple times. Again. Darn it.

There's a demo on Tuesday that I volunteered for, so our demo group separated and started talking about what we would do. I'm looking forward to it - it looks like I'm going to be doing basic rolls and falls, will be a barrier for barrier rolls, will be doing some fun 16-steps on Mike Ashley-Lopez (Captain Kirk, and the kicks #2) and also some self-defense demos (probably from chokes and bear hug from behind). It was definitely very interesting, though I'm curious as to what Dr. Link taught during that session.

After bow-out, we stayed around a little bit. I got in some puppy time with Duc's doggie, Chewbacca, and then started working in throws with a bunch of people on the mat, Chris Peterson watching and giving us tips. I went through about two more rounds than I really should have, but worked a bit on my hip throw. I think it might even be improving. We'll see. Anyhow, after my knees started knocking it was time to head on home and ice my poor legs. Ahhh, my poor legs!