It was fight night last night, but before I got into the mindset created by adrenaline and competitiveness I decided to focus on what I needed to happen. I've been consistently disappointed by the lack of success in sparring while at my new school. The root cause is that at my old school there were no point systems. We went at it with vigor and tried to protect ourselves as best we could.
At my current school sparring is solely focused on point based work. So practicality is tossed aside for some fairly strict rules. The torso and head are the only point areas, a leading shot to the body doesn't count, etc. There are all these rules!
It's been a year and some and I'm getting better at that stuff, but I don't get to participate enough to remember each time. However, this time I wasn't going to worry about the final score. I was going to focus on simple jab and follow-up, but I must say that went out the window pretty quickly. Even with less advanced students I was so slow that everyone was picking me off with quick shots. I lost four out of my five matches. And none of them by sudden death. Wow, that was depressing.
However, since it was my birthday, I was feeling good overall and celebrating the fact that I could still get in there and pretend to know what I was doing. I could see where things were going, but not fast enough to adjust. Probably better than I'd ever done before though.
After class was just me and Mark. We are both now working on separate areas which is a bit sad because having someone do the same stuff is really helpful. However, I was able to refine a bit more of my third bird kata and get a few more moves in before time ran out.
This morning I'm feeling the various bruises from sparring and wonderful soreness that comes with good exercise. It's good to be alive.
No comments:
Post a Comment