The attrition rate in martial arts: Anyone who’s lasted a few months in any martial arts has seen this. I saw it in taekwondo and I’m seeing it again in chin na.
In the last month we’ve had what looks like three dropouts. First a father and son team. Then last night I heard Mantis talking to Smiley about Mr. “this should be easy“. The father and son team I’ll miss because when they came they were fun to work out with. Mr. TSBE I’m not so sure… From what I could overhear it appears that his knee injury worsened after chin na. But it’s just as probable Mr. TSBE used that as an excuse to not come back after the thrashing he took last week. Then again I could be wrong…
Scary was back in class and had a comment that summed things up well. I heard him tell Mantis he strained his shoulder laying carpet. Mantis replied “You’ll need to do stuff on the side that does not hurt.”
Scary’s response: “Everything we do in here hurts!”
This made me think of one of my favorite martial arts quotes:
“Pain is the best instructor, but no one wants to go to his class.”
- Choi, Hong Hi (Founder of Taekwondo)
All martial arts have varying levels of pain desensitization. Boxers condition themselves to take shots. Taekwondoists condition their bodies through hogu drills, occasional sparring without pads, and board breaking. The latter two are obvious. As for hogu drills, essentially you and a partner wear your chest protectors and then you take turns kicking the stuffing out of each other. The rule at my old school was never kick someone any harder than you were willing to be kicked.
In chin na pain is essential. Being able to read your partner’s pain helps you build control and also tells you if you are doing the technique correctly. Also, by being cranked on you strengthen joints, tendons, and ligaments and build up pain tolerance which is a crude form of self-defense from chin na. (the advanced form is escape and counters but I don’t get that class at level one)
I’ve thought about pain a lot these last four years because I’m usually in it a lot! What many people don’t realize is all that pain is more than just some traditional right of passage. As I already noted, it’s also self-defense because you are learning how deal with pain and keep functioning. Though repeated exposure to it you build up tolerance that allows you to take blows that would distract most untrained people. Another maxim from Sabum v. 1:
Every block is a strike.
This is why most blocks in taekwondo and karate have a snap that also gives pain as you block. The rationle being that the pain may either distract the untrained martial artist or in some cases make him or her stop their attack altogether.
Judging by the pain-related dropouts I’ve seen there just may be something to that.
On to chin na:
For beginers it looks like it’s just me and Monkey. He has almost six years in judo-infused taekwondo so he stands a good chance of lasting. He’s also taking the Mantis class and so far so good. They had another senior guy work with us last night. Let’s call him Comedian because he used to do stand-up as a hobby. When Mantis pared us up he said “Bob has seen all of level one so test him.” So, Comedian let me pick out the techniuqes I wanted to see but gave me no clues how to do them until I failed.
We reviewed the four single and multiple finger holdings along with turning around heaven and earth. I’ve seen neither of these more than twice so the review was sorely needed. As Mr. TSBE observed last week: Turning is very aikido-like (minus the snapage). Once I make it to the point where I can do turning without thought I can see it being very effective. Comedian also showed me a nasty option to turning which I really like. At all levels you have a given techniuqe which usually ends in control and a kill shot. Options are essentially another way to end the technique. The end result of most options is snapage of a limb.
I plan to video a few of these with Tornado. Part to see how I’m doing (something we did a lot of in taekwondo) and part to show ya’ll.
Past that, as I left chin na Smiley stopped me again and asked if I was staying for Praying Mantis. Smiley looks like George Clooney and is always smiling. It’s kinda disconcerting when you have a smiling person that’s bending you like a pretzl. Anyhow, he said he wants to see my Mantis shirt soaked in sweat.
I think I can swing the extra money so in November I’m going to suck it up and try Mantis. From what Monkey has told me of their workouts the forecast for winter is more pain.
~BCP
