Pain Pics: Punched in the Face

Pain is suppose to teach us something. Bruises, sprains, cuts and scrapes have been my most effective teachers in the martial arts. When I get a bruise that gives me an insight into life, I take a picture of it to remember and honor the lesson it has taught me. 

I got punched in the face during Karate sparring, I iced the heck out of it and, even though my cheek bone is still sore, the bruise didn't get much bigger.

What I learned: I need to get better/more automatic about blocking stuff coming at my face, a real fight would have ended really badly for me because the force of the punch knocked my contact lens out - I would have been half blind, disoriented and have lost a real fight after that. I should also consider some sort of face guard for sparring.

A New Chapter

I decided to quit my Karate dojo today. I feel a lot of frustration over small things that add up to not really fitting in with the ideology of the school. While being lectured on the importance of the uniform I realized that I will never care about the color of my hair tie, the stitching on my uniform, or any detail that small and that I needed to find a place where I fit in before I burnt any bridges.

When I look for advice on how to quit a dojo on the internet I see a lot of "but I'm only X number of months from my black belt! should I stick with it???!!!" And I realize that I am excited to give up my brown belt for a white one again. The higher the rank, the more important it is to fit in and be an "example" which I will never be while at this school.

I wish the internet had better advice on how to do this "right." Ah well, wish me all the luck.

Weapon bags for Kobudo: Searching

I have not (yet) found the perfect way to bring my weapons to Kobudo. I dislike having them in a jumble in my gym bag because the other gear could mess them up, they could mess up the other gear, it is hard to lay a hand on exactly which weapon I need at any given time and it is hard to see at glance if I have them all.

I have seen few cases on the internet that store a set of kama, tonfa and sai together. Someone in my dojo has this one:

The problem is that is it is large and it is time consuming and inconvenient to strap all the individual weapons into their respective places. Knowing that I would never take the time kept me from buying this bag.

I found one picture of a case like this (http://www.kobudo-tesshinkan.eu/News/news-en.php):

This case looks genius but a little bigger than I need (only 3 weapons) and it looks like it is international which would complicate things.

Sooooo… I decided to make my own!

All those skills I got in high school making my own purses will finally come in handy! It can't be too much different to make the perfect pouch for a tonfa than the perfect pocket for a lipstick!