mystery bruise (2)

No mystery about this one (see two posts prior). Last week I decided I would get the Akamine no Nunchaku form down for good. Last night, I got through it on my own but here is the price I paid.

It is the second nunchaku kata we learn in our kobudo group, the first being Maezato (mezato) no Nunchaku. I have been following along with higher ranked people when they do Akamine no Nunchaku but have not really made it my own until just now. It’s the same kata where I bashed my lip and bled all over some time back, yet another previous post.

We don’t really practice small parts of forms little by little and then put them together. No, you run through the entire kata / form once, maybe twice, trying to keep up with everyone who knows it, and that is it. So you try to grab a move or two each night and slowly, painfully make it yours.

But the time was right to make a big jump forward so I spent most of an afternoon on it, dedicated solely to the idea of walking into practice and blasting out the kata and leaving people wondering “damn, when did you learn that one?”

Well, I didn’t exactly bowl them over but it is mine now – and NOW I can do it with everyone and really start to benefit from the corrections and details.

Back to the bruise. Didn’t really notice any pain that afternoon, but the next day I felt a dull ache. No big deal. Took a shower that night and geez! The telling thing is that there is a lovely bruise on my left side, not on the right, despite having practiced the swing and catch on both sides. You know what that tells us.