Amanda Takes Off...

Today I landed on my foot wrong after doing a jumping double roundhouse kick. Of course I didn't break it, but it did send a jolt through my ankle. Oddly enough, I did the same thing taking off my socks a few days ago. I took off one sock, put my foot down, and felt a sharp jarring in my ankle. Also, when we run in this studio, I find myself slipping and misstepping more than at my own studio.

Meanwhile, while the activities at this studio are different than my own in many ways, I feel like I can keep up. I don't—for the most part—find these classes technically or physically more difficult than my own studio, so I couldn't figure out why my calves have been so sore.

But then I had an a-ha moment: mats. Both my soreness and ankle-jolting problems could be because of the mats. Excluding some hotels in Thailand and Japan, I haven't felt carpeting under my feet in 18 months. No, the studio isn't carpeted, but I haven't trained in a matted studio since June, and I'm pretty sure those mats were thinner than these.

Class went 15 mins late tonight and about 20 minutes before we ended, TempMaster said, "화이팅, Amanda." I think he caught me glancing at the clock while we were doing kicking drills. Ooops.

Shortly after his "fighting!" comment, he lined us up against the wall and said something about sparring. Everyone groaned. He looked at me and said in English, "Amanda, sparring?"

"OK."

But this wasn't sparring against a person. TempMaster had two kicking targets and he moved the targets as he dashed about as quickly as possible. He yelled "주먹," or "나래!" (fist, wings) and other directions while you tried to hit every one. He hit people on the head when they didn't listen to his directions. It was cool to watch.

I was the last adult up and I think I did a pretty good job. He was yelling at me in both English and Korean and at one point I stopped mid-step and said, "뭐해요? 한국어, English, 같이, 아니요, I am confused." No, it is not lost on me that I was saying I couldn't understand Korean and English together...in a sentence made up of Korean and English together. It wasn't lost on anyone else either since they all laughed. TempMaster switched to pure Korean and I went on sparring. At that speed, give me one or the other language, but not both.

At one point he held the target very high and since I was too close to kick it, I did a high punch to push it out of the way. Everyone laughed at that, too. Near the end I did a face block and said, "Please don't hit me," and he just grinned. I didn't get hit.

Now that was pretty cool. I liked that a lot.