Brain: Welp, too many emotions going on here! Better cry to release the pressure till we figure this out.
Me: Nooooooooooooooo!
When I started martial arts I was pretty adamant I was doing this entirely for myself and had absolutely no interest in competing. None. Nada. Ever.
Well.... I decided to give it a go while thinking of it as challenging myself and experiencing new things. I gave myself permission to lose. I gave myself permission of freeze up and just stand in the ring and get hit. I gave myself permission to scratch at the last minute if I thought I might get seriously hurt. And with that mindset I signed up for the Women's Steel Tournament at SoCal Sword Fight. My goals were: 1) Lose honorably without being a complete push over 2) Do not go to the ER or urgent care.
Things went wrong pretty quickly. I got busy at work. I got an incredibly nasty head cold a week before which didn't allow me to put on my mask, spar, or even exercise (seriously, 'Chairzercise Stretching for Seniors' was leaving me wheezing on my couch. Not good.) Going over the Grapevine with sinus pressure was painful and that meant I didn't get any sparing done the day before either. (Also not good). My new goals were 1) Do not puke in my fencing mask 2) Do not pass out in the ring.
I discovered that the problem with the first competition is that you don't know what you don't know. I had no Pre-Competition Plan. I saw other people doing warm up stretch's, listening to headphones to get in the head space and basically managing the stress of upcoming matches. I was doing none of those useful things. Finally, Ramon Santos, who was coaching me, suggested I do some warm up techniques with him (Great idea, I should have thought of that!). That helped but then I had to navigate telling teammates what kind of pep talks were and were not increasing the stress I was under, which was hard do in the moment.
I was NOT prepared for the adrenaline dump of competition. I was prepared for my hands to shake uncontrollably (though with the big gloves I wear, I was able to hold my sword steady) but I was not prepared to literally have no memory of my matches. None. I really hope I didn't hit my competitors too hard or not self call a strike I should have. But I couldn't remember squat. I am really glad that Matthew Bento recorded them because I kind of want to see what I did. I was also really grateful that all my teammates were telling me when I needed to be up for my matches because even though I swear I looked at the schedule beforehand, I couldn't remember precisely anything. I also really appreciated Ray who volunteered to stand in my corner and give me fencing advice …. which I promptly didn't use and made the same mistakes over and over.
The part that was the hardest was that my brain could not process all the strong emotions I was experiencing along with the adrenaline dump (they might have been good emotions, I am still analyzing). My brain usually deals with overwhelming emotions by having a nice cry. Usually not a big problem: moisturizes my eyeballs and clears my sinuses but I realized with horror that everyone else would interpret crying as me being a Disappointment Diva over not being the magically
good Dragon Ninja Warrior Princess who does a training montage and then beats her highly skilled competitors in a single sound track. I was totally fine with looking 'weak' or 'girly' or whatever but not like a Disappointment Diva. The 'not crying' was the hardest part of the whole experience but probably the easiest to fix (give the emotions names like "excitement", "anticipation" and "danger rush" before hand and concentrate on those labels in the moment).
I ended up having a really good fencing day and fenced at the top of my ability. I scored points against my opponents, which was a really big win because I had prepared myself for the very real possibility that I would lose all my matches 12:0. I got a lot more doubles than my pride likes and I really need to focus on taking the offensive in the match and having the presence of mind to stop doing techniques that don't work.
BUT:
I finished 16 out of 18 and managed to accomplish all four of my goals. Yay me :)
