Insert Expletive Here

I broke another toe in class Saturday while sparring. When I broke my first bone ever - the pinky toe on my right foot - Sensei S told me that I would, in all likelihood, break others while training. He was right, of course (when is he not, LOL?), but who'da thunk it would happen so soon after the first?

This time, it's the opposite foot - the toe next to the baby one - and it was the only thing hurting (OK - throbbing) yesterday. Today, my entire forefoot is hurting, although only that one toe is swollen like a sausage.

The gym is calling, though (already had my mandatory rest day this week) and I've been asked to lead an hour of tomorrow night's class. Hmmm....to train or not to train on it? That truly is the question of the day...

This so sucks, BTW!

Chelsea King and Amber Dubois

Violence against women is usually ugly and senseless, but when young women are victims, it feels even uglier.

Chelsea King was a senior at a San Diego-area high school who innocently went for a run at a local park after school. Amber Dubois was a 15-year-old who was last seen by her family as she left to walk to school one morning over a year ago. Neither girl ever returned home. Chelsea's body was found late last week in a shallow grave not far from where she'd parked her car before her run. Amber's remains were found yesterday.

Right now, convicted sex offender John Albert Gardner III is the prime suspect in Chelsea's murder. Police aren't saying yet if he can be connected to Amber's death, but, since girls were similar in body build and disappeared in similar ways, the speculation abounds.

It's more than a little scary that any child could leave for school one morning and never return. It truly is a parents' worst nightmare (and the main reason I didn't watch "The Lovely Bones" when it hit the cinemas - although the novel was amazing)...

So what do we need to do?

In my martial arts training, every sensei I've ever had has spoken first about two things: AWARENESS - as in knowing what is going on around you and AVOIDANCE - as in getting out of dodge the moment it seems like a situation could go south. Perhaps Chelsea and Amber might have been even more aware than they were had they not have been accosted doing something they did on a regular (and obviously felt safe doing). Maybe prevention has as much to do with how our children - particularly our girls - are socialized than anything else.

The reality is that little girls are encouraged to go with the flow, not make a scene, not be argumentative all while being compassionate/helpful to others in need. For so many, these traits have led to awful outcomes; evil doers who prey on women often play on these characteristics to gain their unsuspecting victims' trust. Remember bad guy Buffalo Bill in the movie "Silence of the Lambs" who convinced his last victim to help him load a couch into his van before abducting her? Serial killer Ted Bundy even walked with a limp to garner sympathy from women before he solicited their 'help." Our need to be helpful can be harmful, it seems.

Everyone - adult and child alike - should learn to trust their gut instincts. If a situation or conversation doesn't feel right, it probably isn't. But too often, we women talk ourselves out of thinking someone might be out to do us harm. Not saying that was the case with Chelsea or Amber, but it could be the case for anyone, martial artist or not.

And remember not to be passive if you ever do find yourself being accosted. According to a 1998 FBI criminal victimization survey, 62% of women who screamed, 81% of women who tried to run away and 68% of women who used some type of physical force were able to escape from their attackers. Doing SOMEthing - be it yelling, running away or hitting back - nets better odds than doing nothing. Tell your daughters, sisters, nieces and neighbors. Heck, tell your sons, brothers, nephews and male neighbors, too.

It's not enough to just pray that Chelsea and Amber will be the last girls who never return home from school. Talking to our kids about what to do if they are ever approached - a hard conversation to have, I know - might be even better.

Absence and Fond Hearts: The Olfactory Connection

About two years ago, my sinuses were so blocked that I actually had my doctor worried enough to order an MRI of my head and find out what was going on. Turned out to be major inflammation (whew!) which resulted in a referral to an ear, nose and throat specialist. About five minutes into the exam, the ENT asked me if I'd ever done a contact sport because my septum was severely deviated. Instantly, I flashed back to a line sparring hand drill we'd done a few years earlier where my own punch was blocked and ricocheted back to whack me in the nose. I saw stars but no blood and incorrectly concluded that all was well. Umm....apparently not. (Karate "strikes" again!). He also found nasal polyps pressing against my olfactory nerve and messing with my ability to smell anything, but they appeared to be unrelated to karate...

Last week, my lungs were a little funky. An asthmatic since my high school cross country days, I can usually keep my lungs under control unless I get a cold, but that was not the case this time. As per my doc, I had to break out the heavy artillery - an anti-inflammatory medicine called prednisone to help get my ailing airways back in line. In addition to my lungs feeling better, the inflammation in my sinuses is down a bit and I can do something I haven't been able to in a while: smell! Last night, it was the whiff of coffee when I went into the local gas station to pay for my gas. This morning was my juice and the syrup on my pancakes. Right now, it's unfortunately the dog in need of a bath, but, trust me, it's better than nothing.

It's funny the things you forget you've lost until you get them back. I got so used to not being able to smell anything that when I finally could, it felt like sensory overload. I felt the same way when breast reconstruction surgery had me sidelined from karate for two months (I spent the time trying to keep my senses sharp by watching karate training videos and kung-fu movies, LOL). When I finally was all healed and able to get back to class, I felt like a kid in a candy store - kicking, blocking and kiaing all over the place.

But unlike after reconstruction, prednisone is only a temporary fix for my sense of smell. The only way to make it more permanent is to have surgery and have the polyps removed. I've resisted the idea for a while because eventually, the polyps will probably grow back and because the surgery itself will force me to be off the mat - again - at least for a bit. Sigh...

Ever have nasal surgery for polyps? Would you do it again?

Making it Work: The Long and Short of It

Last night in class, we worked more ippon kumite add-ons. Our instruction from Sensei S was to pick a technique from our ippon library and add at least one (or two, if possible) to it so our uke was eventually on the ground and neutralized. The goal, he said, was to get us to the point where the technique flowed without pausing to think "What should I do next?" Real fights, he said, don't happen at half-speed like they do in the dojo. Now, I've only been in one "street" fight in my life (a second-grade bru-ha-ha with a classmate named Terry: she pulled my hair, I pulled hers and it was over), so I kinda have to rely on his knowledge and the testimony of others who have felt the adrenalin-drenched "fight or flight" response that comes when a confrontation is eminent for detail of what a knock-down, drag-out fight is really like (like this description by fellow blogger ZenHG, for example).

Anyway, my uke was a woman who hasn't been training in our style for long. A black belt in another art, she donned a white belt and jumped in the back of class over a year ago to earnestly learn USA Goju. She's strong and very fluid, but the ippon she wanted to start with was one she didn't know very well. Subsequently, we spent much of the time that we were supposed to be trading techniques helping her transition from Ippon #5 to dumping and "finishing" me. We got down to brass tacks and eventually, the techniques became seamless for her, but when Sensei S wanted to see what we'd all worked on, he wanted to see each of us defend. Because I hadn't gotten a chance to go through my add-ons, I instantly panicked. When my dojo brother, Ed, saw my face he leaned over and said "Don't worry - it's in your head!" - meaning stop thinking, trust the training and do the damn thing. So after my partner did her thing to me, I got ready to do just that.

Trouble is, the technique I'd picked wasn't very effective at all. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that until after her punch was coming and I tried to get out of the way. Not only did I barely move, I ended up behind her in a most awkward position after a hook kick to her back and just kind of swept her lead foot in a way that was strained and forced, not smooth and fluid. In my head, I was saying "What the heck was that?" so I'm sure it looked a bloody mess to everyone else. Of course, Sensei S had me do it a few more times, but it got no better. Eventually, he replaced my 5'2", 105lb. white belt uke with Sensei J, a 6'2" 250lb. fourth dan who is lightening fast. Yep - trouble.

As you might imagine, getting out of his way didn't go so well either, so much so that our knees literally bumped as he came forward and I had absolutely no chance of getting any follow-through technique off. Sensei S got on me for not using my height/fighting like a much shorter person (he literally says this about every third class or so - and he's absolutely right, but I'm working on it). While the rest of the class moved onto refining the subtleties of their add-ons, I was getting remedial "this is how you move out of the way" assistance from Sensei J. Sigh...

Have you ever watched a fellow martial artist or dojo mate do a technique with the grace of a ballerina but looked like a total rock when you tried to emulate it? That's what stepping to the left - a simple tai sabaki move to avoid contact - felt like to me last night. I knew what I needed to do: start moving as soon as Sensei J's hand began moving towards my head, but each time I did, I either moved too slowly, moved too far away (which put me out of range to counter), didn't move far enough (which didn't give me enough room to get the hook kick off) or simply couldn't get my feet to go to the angle they were supposed to. It wasn't like I wasn't trying; I just couldn't do it.

"This really shouldn't be so hard," I kept telling myself. I've been doing Ippons for years, daggone it. Nobody else in the room had any difficulties moving at all. It's simply a STEP TO THE LEFT, for crying out loud! But my feet and the rest of me just couldn't - or wouldn't - cooperate. I had become the "Here's what NOT to do in a confrontation" poster child.

But Sensei J was patient. He physically showed me exactly when I needed to start moving (just when his hand came to the edge of my "danger range" which was just inside my fingertips when my hands were extended in front of me), which we did v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y at first, then sped up a bit. He moved my body to the position it should have been to get the hook kick off effectively and let me try to get it higher - to his head, actually - again and again. He showed me other openings and how to use my legs to get to those openings. When Sensei S glanced over to check my progress, he saw the kick to Sensei J's head and simply said "That could work for you." Then he began telling us all how important it was to get comfortable with and use techniques that would work for each individual. I'm tall and have long legs, but I'm rather light. I know that the techniques that might work for someone shorter or against someone stronger - like a hook kick to the back from close range or dragging a bigger adversary down with one arm - might not work for me. So I need to find other things that will. Finding my "go to" technique(s) so I don't have to wonder "Now what?" may save my hide someday.

The moral of my story? Perhaps every technique won't work for everybody, but knowing what won't work for you is as good a place to start as any - that and the idea that trying and failing miserably is always better than not trying at all. But, of course there is much work to do, as there always is. As I've mentioned before, a musician friend of mine refers to the sharpening of his skills as "shedding" - as in taking it apart, doing it again and again in an effort to learn how to do it better - all in the woodshed behind the house, which is how it was done back in the day...

Heading to the shed again :-)

When Life Gets in the Way of "The Way"

We recently had a tragedy in the area: one of the kids who use to take karate with us was stabbed to death. Levi, the former karateka, was 17. The young man who stabbed him was only 13.

While looking back through some dojo photos for one of Levi to give his younger brother (another former student) at the wake, I came across this picture I took after youth promotions three years ago:


Levi is on the bottom row - second from the left. Of the 29 folks pictured - minus Sensei F - only 12 are still training. That includes some of the black belts lined up in the back.

Many folks I've trained with over the years have had to step away from the dojo at some point or other - some for a little while, some for a little while longer. Some have come back, but a whole lot have not. You miss them for a minute, but then months pass and you sort of forget that you used to see them on a regular. They get busy, you get busy and, well, life happens. Before you know it, you find yourself pointing to them in an old photo saying "Hey, what ever happened to...?"

Kinda sad, really...

Times That Try (Wo)men's Soles

In addition to my day job, I'm an adjunct journalism professor and last night was my first night back for the spring semester. Since I spend way too much time with my hair pulled back and in sweats (on the way to the gym or karate class), I try my best to dress professionally when I step onto the classroom, which usually means dress pants, a nice blouse or sweater and (drumroll....) a pair of pumps. Not very high pumps (I am 6'2", after all), but with a bit of a heel just the same.

Since my class ends at 9:30pm, it's quite dark when I head to my car for the trip home, which means there are lots of shadows around bushes, building entryways and corners even with the campus' sidewalk lamps blazing the path. Forever the karateka, last night I ran a few self-defense scenarios in my head as my heels clicked across the cobblestones en route to the parking lot. Balancing my weight and that of my briefcase on shoes teetering in the sidewalk breaks and cobblestones proved quite tricky - so much so that I couldn't imagine being able to run away or spin on the balls of my feet to throw a kick if I needed to. I felt sort of powerless in a way, which made me want to get to my car that much quicker, which of course my shoes prevented me from doing. And this is the same campus where I take karate class twice a week - but it is a totally different place at night when I'm rocking my "girl" shoes, I found...

I haven't done much training in regular clothing (READ: sans gi or in any type of shoes), but we're often told to kick shoes like sandals, flip-flops or mules off as soon as a confrontation seems unavoidable. But my boots were zippered almost up to my knee. No way I was gonna be able to kick those things off unless I asked the attacker to allow me a few seconds to unzip them.

So what's a professional woman to do - toss out every pair of "girl" shoes in the closet and wear running sneakers everywhere? Learn how to navigate in tricky footwear (as if walking in shoes with a heel wasn't challenging enough) a-la the animated female warriors from Tekken? It can be a real dilemma for some of us - and I train on a regular to be aware of my surroundings/potentially bad situations. What about the women who don't? I'm sure Joe Evildoer looking for a potential victim watches for things like tricky footwear, scarves or ponytails (to make grabbing from behind easier). Hmmm...Perhaps our footwear can make us potential victims by default, whether we train or not...

As for me, I'll be carrying my "girl" shoes in my bag from now on just to be on the safe side. How about you?

"Superfoot" in Atlantic City

My dojo mates and I have traveled a bit over the past few months. Last weekend, we hit the road again for an awards banquet in Atlantic City where Sensei S and Sa Bom Nim Slader were honored. But before the banquet, there were a ton of seminars to sample and see - including this one I filmed of the legendary Bill "Superfoot" Wallace on kicking in sparring competitions (which became the very first video I ever posted on YouTube!):



After all the kicks were thrown, my son posed for a picture with Mr. Wallace and got an autographed photo. He also got to take picture with actor/martial artist Michael Jai White (of "Spawn" fame). Can you tell he was excited?

In addition to a pair of very heavy trophies, Sensei S and SBN Slader each received beautiful Samurai swords for their contribution to their respective arts. Here's Sensei S with his sword (still in the box):

We're not planning on any more group travel until the Susquehanna Martial Arts Symposium at end of March, which is good in a way. It's nice to travel and see new things, but it's also good to be home. Off to class!