Allow me to kickoff fitness week with a kick.

A big part of Saturday morning's karate lesson was learning how to defend against roundhouse kicks. Brooklyn taught us how to properly absorb the impact of the kick with our arm, and how to make the attacker our bitch by hooking the leg. Once the attacker's leg is hooked, s/he is at your mercy. After this brief tutorial, Brooklyn told Silver and I to practice on each other.

I start out by kicking Silver quite delicately. She tells me not to be such a pussy, so I kick her a little harder. Then we switch rolls and she starts kicking me, tentatively at first until I razz her about kicking like a girl. We go back and forth practicing; I kick her several times and then she kicks me several times. With each subsequent round, our blocks become more refined and, consequently, our kicks increase in power. This is nifty feedback loop, because as the kicks get harder we have to block better, and as we block better the kicks become more aggressive.

We both start feeling pretty confident. We begin mixing it up. Kick high, kick low, kick left, kick right. Block high, block low, block right, block left. There is some sick form of satisfaction that we're both mutually feeding off of.

Silver kicks. Her left roundhouse starts low and comes in on a rising arc trajectory. I shift my body and arms to defend my right side. Silver's foot makes it over my shoulder and under my left hand, which is lazily protecting my face. TWACK to the head! Her dizzying kick lands solidly on the side of my face. My right ear screams in pain. I recoil and clutch my head with both hands. Through watery eyes and stiff jaw I yelp, "Holy fuck! How did you get your kick so high?" Despite the fiery pain shooting down my ear and the unshakable ringing drone, I was thoroughly impressed that 5' 5" Silver was able to tag me in my 5' 11" head with a left-footed roundhouse. The improbability of such a kick lulled me into a half-assed defense of my head, and that underestimation of Silver's ability led to THWACKing agony.

There were a couple times, prior to getting tagged, that I aimed for Silver's head. Even though she is a shorter target, I couldn't get my foot up that high. These head kicks of mine tended to land on her shoulder. Shows how inflexible I am. I may not be able to pull off a roundhouse to the head, but apparently Silver can. I shall remember in the future not to underestimate the elevation and power behind Silver's roundhouses.

To date, this has been my favorite karate lesson.
...and so it was written, shenry at 3/14/2005 10:15:00 AM.
...and so it was appended with .