Saturday, February 10, 2007

Kicking at air and missing...

Well.. I managed to do this to myself. I was practicing my roundhouse kicks in open air, and managed to slam my toes into an inanimate object. My two little toes instantly erupted in quite alot of pain. My smallest toe is nicely swollen.. it's not broken, but it sure doesn't like too much movement, or being encased in a shoe or boot. I needed to go shopping with my teen son today, so I was walking around with crutches. Honestly, my foot wasn't in horrible pain, and I was able to put weight on it, but I decided to use crutches to help rest the tendons and muscles of that foot.

I learned alot as I used crutches:

A) You need strong abdominal muscles to swing your body forwards in a controlled manner.

B) You need strong straight arms (similar to the push up position) and good posture to be able to move efficiently.

C) My husband told me that I moved very much like those Kung Fu artists on wires. Have you seen "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"? Like the scene where they were jumping from roof top to roof top.. that's how my body swung forwards smoothly like a pendulum.

D) I still went to class because there was really nothing wrong with my arms, and if I was careful to land on my heel I was still able to do stance. ( Call me addicted..)

E) Landing on your heel as you move forwards is easy.. landing on your heel moving backwards is challenging, but very possible with proper motivation.

4 comments:

Jill said...

Ouch!! Be careful not to over do it!!!
And Wow!! You could be in a martial art movie!!

Colin Wee said...

If you should kick in the home, you should try doing what I told Arnie to do, that is to stop trying to do 'martial arts'. You should think of a foot extension no differently from a hand extension. Make your foot follow the path your hand would follow, or a path that your mind maps out for it. If you follow a 'kicking template' from the dojo, you would mostly forget the setup ... and likely just focus on the angle of entry and the ultimate point of impact. This is probably how you screwed up your toe. The mind doesn't 'target' or callibrate through the entire range of motion, it just targets right at the end. :-) Refine the path, and it'll decrease the probability that you'll hit something that you didn't initially consider.

Colin

Mir said...

Ha ha That's a cute comment Jill! Wouldn't it be something to see this little Mommy crossing the street with her kids, and a gang of theives come to harm the family, and suddenly the Mom erupts with fancy black belt moves to devestate the opponent. Ha ha ha... Then she gathers up her children like a hen gathers up her chicks, and walks away with a "hrumph!" while the bad guys lay still, or crawl around on the ground.

Mir said...

Wow Colin.. that's exactly it! I wasn't thinking about the whole movement, but just on the final target. I've been keeping the whole movement in my head in the past couple of weeks, and I've found that my kicks have improved. Thank you.