one of those nights

It started off well – I got an early start for the 90-minute commute and arrived early. The teacher came a few minutes later – and sat down in the lobby of the 6th floor of the building we use for practice.

The room had been reserved well in advance but the paperwork had not arrived with the teacher. And without the paper forms in hand, they won’t let people use the room. There is absolutely no flexibility on this issue.

So we set up shop in the lobby and got to work. No uniforms – if we wore them, they would tell us to stop. But without a uniform – then it is OK to flail about with all manner of weapons, and flail we did.

No time to waste. Heavy nunchaku review, then bo, then something new: the sai vs. bo exercises. All of them. Nice partner drills, good contact, and the sai always “win” the encounter, always started by the bad guy with the bo. We had a nice sai vs. sai set in Nebraska, but I have never seen that over here, and this was my first chance to work sai vs. bo intensively.

So the frustration of not being able to get into the workout room – after a 90-minute trip – melted almost immediately. I had been given a chance, one chance only, to nail this set. Once it is ingrained, I can practice and review on my own, and with partners before/after the usual practice time, but getting it into the body is the hard part.

Rather than going through each of them once, one through ten, then repeating the whole cycle, and so on (the inefficient method so common in Japan), we did it like this: 1, 1+2, 1+2+3, repeat 1-2-3, then add one in, and so on.

In short, we spent over an hour doing the right kind of repetitions and I have a decent feeling for the set – and can now really begin to practice it. We probably wouldn’t have spent nearly as much time or done as many reps if we hadn’t been locked out, so all worked out quite well. The rest of practice went well and was disturbed only by the sudden mid-kata appearance of a rather noisy and confused stag beetle in the room. We maintained focus, he was caught and released, and all was well.

It was raining heavily after practice and I had left some notes behind in the lobby and both my trains were late and I just missed the bus for home and had to wait another 20 minutes in the rain and that bus shortens its route since it is late at night…..and none of it mattered. All because of forgotten paperwork and inflexible policy and an hour’s spontaneous drilling in the lobby. Who needs a special room for training?