Offense of Defense?

I've been doing Kempo for a long time. That doesn't make me particularly good, by the way, just persistent. And I'm hoping that if anyone actually takes a swing at me my persistence will pay off.

This past week we did a few drills that feel, to me (right now), very important. In short, because I'd hate to bore you all, we're attempting to apply what we've learned.

What am I going to do when someone actually punches me? (I should put an if in there, shouldn't I?) I've probably got hundreds of techniques that I could do, and if I break those down into smaller bits and pieces, the list could get into the thousands. And let's not even start on the combinations. Right? My brain twitched just thinking about it.

Today we went through a controlled version of this. Someone comes in to punch me. But not just the once, like we usually practice, but several times. As a matter of fact, they just keep coming until I pull off a somewhat recognizable technique. A great drill, and one that pointed out a fatal flaw...I apparently can't think offense and defense at exactly the same time. I completely failed at blocking a single punch when I had to have a certain technique in my head that I planned to do.

Total meltdown of defense. I didn't even care that they guy was hitting me in the head! All I cared about was doing my stupid technique, which didn't ever work because my partner has arms longer than my legs. Don't get me wrong, I tried, but failed. He hit me a lot. I got him once.

Maybe it's just the tall guys. I didn't have as much of a problem with the others in class, but I tell you what, my brain started to flinch and I briefly wondered if I could finally perfect the block with my face move.

That didn't work either.

It just goes to show me, that eight years and thousands of techniques doesn't mean that I know what I'm doing! There is always more to learn, and always another level to climb up to.

I supposed that's true of anything in life. Sensei reminded us today that what you get out of something is directly related to how much you put in. Drat, I wonder what that means to my finding a rich man to marry plan...