Differently wired
(Training ramblings follow, first an upkeep notification:)
Toimitus pahoittelee edelleen esiintyvää kummallisuutta CSS:n kanssa sekä RSS-feedin toimimattomuutta, joista jälkimmäinen johtaa myös siihen, että spammikomentit haamupäivittävät Blogilistaa. Ylläpitomme työskentelee päivin ja öin asian korjaamiseksi. (Joojoo, ihan totta, joskin ei ehkä yhtämittaa.)
Seems under current schedules I can make it to the salle about once a week. It will have to do, and so my first goal for my return to the fold will have to be to teach myself that training needs not to be all or nothing, and to learn what I can with the time I have, and not be constantly frustrated by comparing it all the time it to what I could have learned with more time. This is a thing that creeps up to me again and again. My first teacher of clinical medicine said that the one lesson you need to learn to become a successful doctor is how to cope with your own feelings of inadequacy (“pitää oppia tulemaan toimeen oman riittämättömyyden tunteensa kanssa”), and frankly that’s a lesson I’ve always sucked at. Not learning it almost stopped me from becoming a practicing physician. Maybe it is not a coincidence that I am willing to try and deal with it in swords class at the same time that I am beginning to find the ability to deal with it professionally.
Growing up is a damned hard thing to do. You’d think you’d be through it at the age of 30-plus, but it seems to me I am somehow late and am only beginning.
I have managed to take up the habit to do some conditioning pretty much daily, which while I am not really sure for how long I’ll feel like keeping the habit up, has helped a lot. I also have an access to a gym located on my commute, so I should really remember to grab someone while at the salle and have them re-teach me the weight exercises. If I start doing them without getting a crash course and someone spotting me, all that it will do is totally bust my right elbow which is already in need of heavy maintenance and occasional heavy dosages of ibuprofein to barely cope with the rapier. It always was my problem spot and I am afraid it is suffering terribly from my current total crap muscle strength.
Ilkka taught the class yesterday. I like his current way to teach a class a lot. He’s comfortable with himself (or in any case fakes it well), knows what he can do and cannot do, and his way to explain stuff, especially one-on-one when we practice when he can show and guide, works for me very well. I am certain he has secretly taken acrobatics classes, some irregular stuff in the warm-up was so very familiar, though luckily he was not far gone enough to make us play weirdo tag games (the one thing from acrobatics I seriously dislike).
Lots of balance games in the basic technique section, which I totally sucked in; I seem to have a tendency to “tell” my partner where my weak direction is so clearly that I might as well tell them out loud, except I don’t myself know before I get thrown. No frigging idea what to do about that, other than keep up building basic deep core strength.
Rapier and dagger basics in the weapons section. Never was my favorite and still isn’t. I have a wire from my left hand to my brain which totally shuts down everything I know of rapier if I hold an item (any item, yes, including a rubber duck like was suggested) in my left hand. I had completely forgotten the basic defense lines of the dagger and even though Ilkka went through it really slowly and thoroughly I spent most of the class being totally and utterly confused. Something started to come back during the pair exercises, and it was ok, but I still don’t think I like the dagger there. Feels like cheating.
Like Ilkka said, the dagger, if you know how to use it, makes a lot of things easier and safer, like making sure your opponent stays out of their line when you counter-attack or approach to stringere or whatever. But what the hell, it’s not about “safe” and “easy”. If I wanted to be safe in a rapier fight, I’d not bring a rapier and a dagger, I’d bring a handgun. (Or not go at all.) The added safety of the dagger takes away from the pure elegance of a rapier duel and transforms it more into combat. I might, of course, feel different if we really fought with sharps these days, but since we don’t, as far as swords go, I prefer the elegance of the duel over the excitement of combat - always did.
