It's just not fair

I was very fortunate to start my martial arts career in a dojo where stretching was an important part of every workout. From the beginning I have always tended to be among the more flexible within a group. Then I got started with my Chinese Stuff teacher over here several years back and had to take it to a new level. OK, elbow to the toes? No problem, just give me a couple years. Oh, you also do it cross-body, right elbow to left toes? OK, give me another year.

Then I joined a Friday night gong fu class and realized I hadn't begun my stretching career. Led by a husband-wife team, we might easily spend 1/3 of the class time stretching. Each week they seem to dream up new and sadistic (masochistic?) ways to twist and contort. I am making slow but steady progress - may need another year for the forehead-to-the-toes thing, but I am on it.

One thing I can't seem to make progress in is bending the wrist over until the fingertips touch the inner forearm. I've seen some aikido people do this but almost no one in gong fu. So I have taken it as a special challenge - but can't seem to make much progress.

I spent last week teaching government employees over here. One kid in my group was a surfer. Complete anti-thesis of the martial artist's rigor and discipline, right? And here he is, wrist bent almost completely over. We were taking a break and he was popping knuckles in his hand and I joked about him bending his wrist this way. And there he went, just like that.

Incidentally there was also an aikido person in our group. At my suggestion she tried a technique on him (kote gaeshi??) and it still worked quite well. Anyway, even if it won't prevent a dastardly aikido-ka from flooring me in screaming agony, I still want to work on this wrist bend thing.

Maybe if I took up surfing???