keep on plodding

In the past 24 hours I've had a lot of rest and a lot of pain.

• I taught my first hip hop class as mentioned in the last post - I've had some feedback from the students; people were really happy with my teaching style and would love to see more :]
• Spent another hour rehearsing for a performance, making friends with some really bright, funny energetic dancers ^^
  
• I've had 3 martial arts training sessions, with two guys and one girl, total of about four and a half hours of training
  
• watched Iron Man 2 in Dendy Premium with a delicious chocolate platter and trio of dips
• and watched How to Train your Dragon in 3D.

All fantastic, a very eventful 24 hours :D

And also, a mysterious call at 1am this morning. My sister crying. My older brother smashed her laptop in a rage and she has an assignment due on Monday. Drama drama.

Now for my own mini dilemma. Check out that bruise there. Vicious right? Can't really tell, but it's about the size of a big tablespoon of strawberry jam. My second student, Alix did that to me today - I told her to use two different types of kick on my shoulders. This bruise is on my left shoulder, from her right leg. But that's not important.

What happened next is important. Alix has been having trouble placing pressure on opponents - this is important as a fighter. So I told her to simply beat me aruond the head and body, and I would not defend myself at first, but would slowly start to fight back, and she would have to maintain the same level of pressure on me even as I resisted. In hindsight, this was far too much of a psychological burden on her, but that is what hindsight is. After doing this twice, she was exhausted physically and emotionally, she was in tears. It didn't occur to me that this would be so difficult - my other student had taken to this very quickly, but he is male and also a rugby player who is OK with dispensing pain.

I discussed this a short time ago with a friend before watching How to train your dragon. He suggested that we just move to pads to ease the burden of punching a friend. His wife suggested we just go to the gym.

I had another thought - I could just teach her dance instead. Plus gym maybe. It may be time for me to quit martial art for good.

Martial art has a number of useful upsides though. The physical strain is enormous - only breakdance, acrobatics and gymnastics match it for intensity in my opinion. The emotional strain is enormous - I can't think of any skill that is taxing in the same way - to win fights, you have to be INTENSE and full of fire! A lazy fighter who doesn't care will always lose. If you learn to fight with fire, you can learn to dance with fire, design with fire, many things!

But, I already know this stuff. Don't need to learn again. So, my next problem is breaking the news of my "resignation" to everyone, and also figuring out how to teach people to dance with fire. Stay tuned :]