Let me explain what I mean and I will take the long winded approach. I was never a big kid. I was never a very strong kid. The fact is i was usually barely scraping by on all of the required phis-ed activities, mostly thanks to my Mom (from what I hear, the storms she used to raise in school were legendary). However, I always loved sports. I tried a lot of things when I was in school: tennis, ping-pong, volleyball(weird for kid of my non-existent height), team handball, soccer, you name it I tried it. My preference were two things, the first one was hitting small round object with some sort of accessory, be it a tennis racquet ping pong paddle, or a hockey stick (yes we did not always had a puck growing up). The other came from watching all of those Hong Kong movies, we got access to in the mid 90s. Yes I admin it, I used to be the martial arts junkie.
Because I was small, I was an easier target bullies. Now, I hate to play to stereotypes, but being a smart Jewish kid I had my ways of dealing with them. This is not important. What important is that I was mesmerized by the likes of Jackie Chan and Jet Li and when the Soviet Union eased up on the cracking down of MA schools I joined as a little kid. My first experience was a Judo class at our school. The coach was a cranky cross-eyed bastard who we absolutely loved. He taught us a mix of Judo and Sambo, which was an official Russian MA invention. Again I was small, and close combat was not really my thing. After couple of years, and a spat with the coach (he had very strict rules on fighting, but one day I just had to protect myself) I switched over to an eclectic mix of kung-fu, karate and god knows what else. But hey, we were kids and we loved the stuff.
Many years passed. I've never even considered taking up MA when moving to the States. Too expensive, no time, laziness - all the usual reasons. In the last 8 years or so, I really got out of shape. I have been playing tennis on occasion but not enough to constitute any significant work-out effort (tennis is also something I always loved, more than any other sport). In the last couple of years, I've made all sorts of attempts to exercise, run, walk to loose weight and be in some sort of form. All of it slowly failed as I got bored too fast (short attention span another one my problems). I got back into tennis this year by signing up for an adult league. It will keep me coming back to play at regular intervals with good amateurs.
The other thing is that I am considering returning to MA. At my age it could seem silly, what does a 36 year old doing by donning a kimono and wildly flailing arms and legs. We signed up our 8-year-Old for Tae-kwon-do classes back in November and she loves it. She already passed for orange belt. Every time I take her to the classes I feel this itch to try it again myself. I think I am past caring about what others think about an overweight dude trying to do a ninja.
So, here is a point I was trying to make about body being a marvelous thing. I am talking about muscle memory. I haven't played tennis on any sort of regular basis since I was about 15-16. My body responds on it's own. While never playing at pro-levels, I achieved a instinctive response to the game to some degree. If I want to make a line-drive my arms and body in general remember how to do that. I don't need to retrain myself to make all the small needed adjustments for volleys or cross-courts or even a good first serve. The same seems to be case with MA. I took one try-out class with my kids TKD master. The body still seems to remember how to position myself for a good roundhouse kick, or how to pull up a mid-block. I accidentally managed to impress the master and couple of adults taking that class. Now if only i could loose that extra 20 pounds so I could live through the exercises. After first 10 minutes I was dripping with sweat, and could hardly breath.
Anyway, the body is a marvelous thing when something that haven't been used for years or learned as a kid needs to be remembered. It's way more difficult with brain and memory as a lot of things that haven't been used (like trigonometry) must be re-learned a new.
Because I was small, I was an easier target bullies. Now, I hate to play to stereotypes, but being a smart Jewish kid I had my ways of dealing with them. This is not important. What important is that I was mesmerized by the likes of Jackie Chan and Jet Li and when the Soviet Union eased up on the cracking down of MA schools I joined as a little kid. My first experience was a Judo class at our school. The coach was a cranky cross-eyed bastard who we absolutely loved. He taught us a mix of Judo and Sambo, which was an official Russian MA invention. Again I was small, and close combat was not really my thing. After couple of years, and a spat with the coach (he had very strict rules on fighting, but one day I just had to protect myself) I switched over to an eclectic mix of kung-fu, karate and god knows what else. But hey, we were kids and we loved the stuff.
Many years passed. I've never even considered taking up MA when moving to the States. Too expensive, no time, laziness - all the usual reasons. In the last 8 years or so, I really got out of shape. I have been playing tennis on occasion but not enough to constitute any significant work-out effort (tennis is also something I always loved, more than any other sport). In the last couple of years, I've made all sorts of attempts to exercise, run, walk to loose weight and be in some sort of form. All of it slowly failed as I got bored too fast (short attention span another one my problems). I got back into tennis this year by signing up for an adult league. It will keep me coming back to play at regular intervals with good amateurs.
The other thing is that I am considering returning to MA. At my age it could seem silly, what does a 36 year old doing by donning a kimono and wildly flailing arms and legs. We signed up our 8-year-Old for Tae-kwon-do classes back in November and she loves it. She already passed for orange belt. Every time I take her to the classes I feel this itch to try it again myself. I think I am past caring about what others think about an overweight dude trying to do a ninja.
So, here is a point I was trying to make about body being a marvelous thing. I am talking about muscle memory. I haven't played tennis on any sort of regular basis since I was about 15-16. My body responds on it's own. While never playing at pro-levels, I achieved a instinctive response to the game to some degree. If I want to make a line-drive my arms and body in general remember how to do that. I don't need to retrain myself to make all the small needed adjustments for volleys or cross-courts or even a good first serve. The same seems to be case with MA. I took one try-out class with my kids TKD master. The body still seems to remember how to position myself for a good roundhouse kick, or how to pull up a mid-block. I accidentally managed to impress the master and couple of adults taking that class. Now if only i could loose that extra 20 pounds so I could live through the exercises. After first 10 minutes I was dripping with sweat, and could hardly breath.
Anyway, the body is a marvelous thing when something that haven't been used for years or learned as a kid needs to be remembered. It's way more difficult with brain and memory as a lot of things that haven't been used (like trigonometry) must be re-learned a new.
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