Sparring

Last night was a good night for sparring, even though I was left exhausted and shaking.

In which rising knees are quite effective

We started off with the lead instructor in his padded suit of armor. The game here is that he plays the aggressor, charges in, and we’re supposed to go full-contact to protect ourselves and drive him back. For those who need to be shaken up a little, he’ll sometimes yell. Students cheer each other on. It’s a good time all around. Each student gets a series of 1 minute rounds.

I went first: He yelled something about my effeminate skillz on the XBox and charged in with a big looping right hook. Now, Dan would never in his life attack with something so brutally obvious and vulnerable as a “running at you, looping right hook,” but we’re training for a different situation here. I sidestepped around it, put both arms across the back of his shoulders, and gave him a rising knee to the gut. I pulled it to hit lightly, but definitely shifted the armor a little.

Fight stops. He backs away gasping. Apparently, what I perceived as “shifting a little” had caused more than a bit of discomfort in the crotch. I had hit just beneath the belly button, but the armor is all connected at that point.

The other students stop cheering. One finally asks “dude, did you just knee Dan in the balls?”

Yes. Yes I did. First strike into the class, and I had rearranged my teachers guts. Lovely. I’m dead.

In which everybody must get stabbed in the throat

After he recovered, and went through the rest of the class (none of whom had the guts to follow my example) the next exercise was for Dan to grab a rubber knife. We were to play “keep away” with our precious organs for 30 seconds. I’m usually pretty good at this game, especially since I’ve got him by several inches on reach.

Let’s skip ahead and say that I tried to be clever and kick the knife out of his hand, and (hypothetically) got my right femoral artery opened, and then my throat cut while I was dithering about how one would recover from such a mistake. The whole rest of the class got mangled too. It was a bad scene.

In which there is sparring

After that, Dan was pretty much worn out. Keep in mind that he went three rounds with each of about 10 students. Those of us who had brought pads were allowed to do some “controlled contact” sparring. I honestly love this part of class. Nothing else comes even close in terms of a cardeo workout … and there’s a savage joy in getting to actually try to get around another human being’s defenses. Of course, this is also the part of class where we’re most prone to injury and trouble … but that’s why we do it in a controlled manner with a stopwatch and an observer.

As usual, the partners were hugely mismatched. There were three of us:

1) Me.
2) A 14 or 15 year old girl, a full foot shorter than me.
3) One of the senior instructors, a 23 year old third degree black belt.

I was really happy to hold my own. In fact, I’ve apparently gotten a lot better in the past several months. However, three, two minute rounds left me wondering if I was going to heave on the way home. I didn’t, but that was really plenty for me.