Circle of Awkward

Just got home from tonight's class. Instead of the (I presume) usual method of practicing our kicks, punches, and blocks we used a method called rhythmic kicking. It is apparently a Hapkido practice. Once I finally grasped the basic repetitive choreography, I think I did okay. It was then a matter of knowing which kick to use at the end. A major upshot of this rhythmic kicking was that we were working in front of the mirrors, instead of kicking pads. My left foot has only just started feeling normal again in the last day or so, and I wasn't relishing the idea of possibly hurting it all over again.

Then we worked on some self defense moves that all resulted in taking your opponent completely down to the floor. A lot of them rely on pressure points and/or manipulating the wrist or arm into uncomfortable angles. Some I did well one, some not so much.

A note about take-downs: apparently this is one sport/art in which being short is generally an asset. Because I am small, my turning radius is also small. When I take down the maybe not quite 6-foot Mr Saxton, he goes down HARD. This makes me feel bad sometimes. Usually it's at least a sign that I've done the move right, and obviously if I were actually being attacked I probably wouldn't feel nearly so sympathetic, but... it makes me feel guilty sometimes.

With our remaining 15 minutes of class, Mr Saxton polled the students on what they wanted to work on. To my chagrin the chosen exercise was "circle self defense." The idea is that one person at a time goes around the circle using the same attack move against each person in the circle, who must then counter the attack in a different way than anyone else in the circle has used. Sounds kind of fun, right? Except my current problems with this exercise are two-fold: I have only learned very limited white belt self defense sequences, so once those moves have been used by my classmates for a particular attack, I'm left to try to make up something else reasonable. Secondly, when it becomes my turn to attack my classmates I clam up. As a pacifist, I don't exactly stand around thinking of ways to attack people. It's an incredibly awkward thing for me to (even fake) attack someone.

Interesting to note, though, that upon my declaration of being a pacifist, Mr Saxton replied that he is as well. This is a subject I've been thinking about quite a bit recently, and I will eventually post an in-depth examination of pacifism and martial arts.