The Bucking Horse Reflection

Even though I could not find the actual anecdote for this one, I still remember its core lesson. Self-defense involves going out of one's way in order to avoid danger. This is a very important idea in martial arts. At the beginning of many martial artists' careers, they are taught not to put themselves in dangerous situations. Many teachers often emphasize that they would rather their students never have to physically apply their training (such as getting into a fight or brawl or something), and rather have them be intelligent and walk away from the potential threat or avoid it altogether. 

However, it is important to distinguish avoiding the problem and walking away from being completely passive, something that is also to be avoided. When one is completely passive, they are allowing themselves to be taken advantage of, bullied, or even abused physically or mentally. While it is possible to avoid some situations, there are times when one has to act in order to protect themselves. For example, my father always told me that I should never start a fight and always try to avoid problems, which is something that I still actively try to do, but he also told me that if it looked like anyone were about to hurt me physically that I should defend myself accordingly. I also agree with that, but by no means am I condoning needless violence. After all, in the past martial arts were used with force in order to survive, but in modern times, the majority of people who learn martial arts to defend themselves are lucky enough to never have to do so. 

Difficulty and Disruption

During my last WISE class, we listened to an audio recording of an essay by Brian Grazer. In his essay, he wrote about how he likes to make things difficult on himself, to push himself outside of his comfort zone in order to keep growing and developing and discovering new things about himself. His discomfort, he believes, is what he needs to stay alive as he ages. 

There are many different facets of this idea. For example, in the physical aspect I do think that making things difficult is a good idea as long as it is within reason. But for as far as being put into uncomfortable situations unnecessarily is concerned, I do not think it is a good or reasonable idea. Most of the time when something inconvenient happened in my project, I worked through it, but I ended up losing valuable time. These disruptions, for the most part, are not caused by other people, but lack of care or an oversight on my part.

The Spring Crunch

At the beginning of my senior year, I had so many ideas for what my WISE project could be. From parkour, to calligraphy, I always was thinking about what I wanted to do, what skills I could learn and I never really gave much thought into how much time I would actually have to commit to my project. Within the next couple of weeks I will have two finals and two AP's and consequently my workload from school has drastically increased making it more strenuous to do any sort of time-intensive work aside from my studies and physical training.

I have been reading Kaicho Nakamura's books and one of his lectures is about focus. The lecture basically stated that in order to do the best work that you can possibly can, you have to focus solely on what you intend to do. For example, when students are not distracted by social networking sites or videos they are much more productive and their work is of much better quality. By focusing this intently, students also finish their work much sooner than they would have otherwise. If I apply this to my studies, with any luck I will be able to do more work for my project as well as have more time to relax. 

New Blog Structure

I am changing the set up of my blog. I am going to create another two pages in addition to my main page. One will be my research page and the other will contain martial arts anecdotes or scraps of wisdom as I come by them.

Project Hiccups

For the past ten days or so, I have run into several major problems with my project. Since the majority of my project work is physical training, any type of injury is a hindrance. Unfortunately I very recently injured my knees, the left more than the right, but both just do not feel right. These injuries make it somewhat painful to climb stairs and at times just to walk.

As to how I hurt my knees, it is not that complicated (at least I think). Wednesday night I went for a run around where I live which consists of steep hills, and I think that the jarring motion of running may have played a small role in the injury. In addition, it probably did not help that I ran another mile the next day. However, I did not feel pain or discomfort while I was running, immediately before, or immediately afterwards but once I arrived home Thursday night, my left knee started to hurt. I did attend my Karate class that night thinking that it was only a minor injury but thus far, my knee still hurts when I put a significant amount of weight on it.

To think that several short runs could cause that kind of injury makes me think about how fragile people really are. Whether someone sprains their ankle, breaks their arm, or even loses a limb due to a serious accident, injuries happen to everyone and in every place. That being said, I often catch myself thinking about the destructive power of martial arts. Many simple strikes, if applied correctly, can be lethal. From the simple and straightforward punch, to the variety of knife-hand techniques that many martial artists learn, all of these share a simple, deadly grace that can inspire awe in spectators.

Moving forward with my project will probably involve me just working on hand techniques as to minimize the strain on my legs and expedite the healing process. Meditation will also start to play a big role, as it is necessary to foster personal growth and development.

Karate Class

Today's Karate class was very fun. I had not been able to attend any of them for the past week so it was nice to get back into the swing of things. The illness really took a lot out of me and I felt really sluggish in class. I also felt that my technique was a little off. However, I did remember all of my self defense techniques which was encouraging.

I plan on going for a short run early tomorrow morning and then I will practice my techniques. I really need to polish my techniques and make them faster, stronger, and much more controlled.

Project Update

It has been a several weeks since my last post and this week will be a catch up week for me. Last week was my spring break from school and I had planned to do all of my research and amp up my training then, but unfortunately I became extremely ill at the beginning of my break and am just now recovering.

Today was the first day resuming my workout and it was ok. I avoided intense cardio based activities because I am still prone to coughing due to exercising which is why I am going to take it easy all week. However, I plan to gradually add small cardio segments this week such as short jogs in the morning to wake up.

This week I am going to start posting my research and searching for more motivational videos to help power through senioritis, which is slowly taking hold and making it more and more difficult to focus on my training and my studies.