Rehab

A while ago, I fell into a small hole and rolled my left ankle in the process. Being the stubborn git that I am, I didn't give it enough time to heal and went to a few kung fu classes the day afterwards and massacred what was actually a very over-stressed ligament. Since mid-december I've been paying a heavy price for it, but finally in the past two weeks I have confidence in being able to run, skip, jump, punch, kick and roll again. So now I'm back to what I love doing, martial arts. I've been studying with Combat Centres for 12 months and it's great. I don't think that I have ever met a nicer group of people who have that unique combination of passion and knowledge. When you see a school with so many senior students kicking ass, it's fantastic. It seems that every second krotty or tkd school you walk into, nobody can fight and nobody has been around for more than 18months :/ That's very disheartening when you consider that you can only learn the basic techniques within that period of time. M.A shouldn't be some type of McDojo experience, you can't do shit if you get trained in a half-assed manner.

So do I bash people? Pretend I'm Bruce Lee? Live life in an RPG with +10 H2H combat skills and +7 nunchuck skills?! No no no. I benefit in a similar way to someone who does pilates, tai chi, and strangely enough- dancing. Mix in a lot of pad work, drills and sparring, and you have the macho element! It's almost a form of moving meditation, but not quite. I have gained so much confidence in my physical abilities in the past year. I've developed strength, flexibility, speed, agility, and more importantly, a level head when faced with 'fight or flight' situations. It's far better than when I was doing weights and trying to be a big man. That worked, but I felt like shit the whole time and what's worse, I felt uncoordinated, unbalanced and generally.. shit. I just don't have that happening when I do kung fu :)