Butterfly Fray

Sparring

I received a swift kick to the head today.

No, that's not a metaphor.

Chief kicked me in the head during our third round of sparring.

I was so surprised that I just stood there processing until he punched me in the ribs and snapped me out of it. Then I grinned as much as I could around my mouthguard and proceeded to surprise him with a right low kick to the thigh.

You see, being on the receiving end of a head kick (even one at less than half speed) is a mark of some accomplishment.

I started full speed, full contact sparring a few months ago and it's been an eye opening experience. There's really nothing that can prepare you for the first time someone clocks you one; it's a completely unique experience. Even with the headgear and the mouthguard, when the boxing coach caught me with a left hook I was completely dazed. I spent most of my first round standing there like a deer in headlights, just trying to absorb or deflect his shots rather than trying to land any of my own.

It continued like that for quite some time: I'd get in the ring, make a few feeble attempts to jab or kick my opponent, and then spend the rest of my time doing my best impression of a punching bag. I just... froze.

As anyone who knows me can attest, I've never been one to back down from a worthy fight or shy away from a challenge. Being unable to perform when faced with an opponent was frustrating and disheartening to say the least.  Chief didn't know how to shake me loose from myself and I didn't know how to break the bonds holding me back. So I just continued to accept my opponent's strikes.

To accept defeat.

Eventually I began to shy away from sparring, choosing instead to do extra rounds on the heavy bag or to exhaust myself on the elliptical... anything to look "too busy" to get back in the ring. I'm not proud to say it, but probably would have continued for quite some time had Chief not forced a major shake-up in my training routine.

Which is why last Saturday I found myself standing in the ring facing Chief, who was not wearing any protective gear whatsoever on his legs.

Please understand that this man could probably take out a brick wall with his shins and barely flinch; he wears double shin guards AND knee pads when he spars his students to avoid doing too much damage.

"We're only going to done one round like this" he said "and I'm not going to go full speed, but I want you to know what it feels like to get hit, to really get hit, which it what will happen if you don't stay on the offensive when you're in here."

A week later, the bruises are still fading. My left knee, my right hip, and my right elbow took the brunt of the blows as he tried to force me into action.

But I still stood there like a fucking punching bag.

For three rounds.

I was so frustrated and angry at myself by the time the final bell rang that I launched my gloves to one end of the gym and my mouthguard to the other, fighting back tears. He calmly retrieved everything and leaned on the ropes next to me "You're letting the fear win. You're turning all of your frustration inward and it's crippling you. Let it go. Just do it. Next week, just kick my ass."

I mulled over what he'd said all week and decided that today, no matter what, I was going to come out of my corner fighting. Even if I didn't land one goddamn thing, I was going to try.

And that is exactly what I did.

For eight rounds, I came out swinging. It wasn't pretty, I still absorbed way more kicks and punches than I landed, but the only thing that matters is that I was in the fight. I didn't stand there like an statue, I didn't strike lamely while I waited for the bell, I didn't find myself keeping tears of frustration at bay. I was just there, in the moment, and I have never felt so alive.

As I was lying on the floor panting after our last round, he looked down at my with a grin "It's more fun to be on the offensive, yes?"

Yes.

Yes it most certainly is.

Teach

I haven't been posting here nearly as much as I'd intended. Not because I don't have experiences and stories to share, I do, but because my relationship with Muay Thai is intensely personal and I'm a (surprisingly) private person. I'm confronting uncomfortable or unpleasant parts of myself every day and it's difficult to fight that battle and then turn around and tell the world about it.

Scary, too.

Last night after finished class, I hung around for awhile to do some sets of tricep exercises and to watch N train with Chief. Someday, I strive to fight as well as that woman does. From my spot next to the ring, I could see the boxing class going on in the background.

In particular, I could see two girls who were obviously new to the class; they looked to be in their mid-twenties, cute girls with maybe thirty or forty extra pounds apiece. They were late to class so Chief drew my attention to them when he reminded them (loudly) that he'd told them to be on time. I watched them jackass around through the warm-ups, half heartedly jumping rope and pretending to jazzercise rather than shadowboxing properly, and I watched them giggle and bat ineffectually at their heavy bags during the first drill. At first I was annoyed, but then I looked at them more closely and realized something:

Those girls were letting the fear win. When I looked past the giggling, I realized that they were so terrified and self-conscious that they could barely breathe. I recognized in them the fear that I had so narrowly managed to conquer on my first day.

So I walked onto the floor, stood between them, introduced myself, and asked them if I could give them some advice. They both just sort of looked at me and nodded, wide-eyed.

I've been here about six months now. I don't know about you, but this is the hardest and scariest thing that I have ever done. They both nodded vehemently. But I'll let you in on a little secret: You don't have anything to be afraid of anything here. Here, the only thing that anyone will ever judge you for is not working as hard as you can. Nobody gives a shit how you look, or how much you sweat, or whether or not you want to pass out twenty seconds into the first round. If you're working as hard as you can, that's enough.

Every single person in this gym had a first day, and every single person in this gym has days when they feel like the clumsiest and weakest person on the planet. When I walked in here on my first day I was forty pounds heavier and Chief had to explain the proper form for a hook to me three times. Today I accidentally punched myself in the face and completely ate it when my partner parried a kick and knocked me off balance. But nobody cared, because I'm working hard.

So seriously girls, just lay into those bags. Imagine it's every guy who's ever broken your heart or every boss you've ever hated, just get low and beat the crap out of it. Put your ass into it! If we've got 'em, we might as well use 'em, right? Relax, have fun. Go for it! Don't let the fear win.

The girls looked much relieved when I'd finished talking and sure enough, they hit the bags with a little more gusto after that.

When I got back over to the ring, Chief thanked me too.

As I was driving home, I decided that I should take my own advice and not let fear silence my voice on this blog. Stay tuned for more posting.

Progress

Chief doesn't ask me about my weight very often. As long as I'm losing it steadily and gaining both strength and balance the numbers aren't very important to him, but about a month ago he stopped as we were stepping into the ring and asked me how much I'd lost. He had that impish glint in his eye that invariably spells trouble an interesting new challenge for me, so I answered "about 30 pounds" with some trepidation. He nodded and produced what looked like a boating life vest. When he strapped me into it, I realized that it was a weight vest.

A 30lb weight vest.

Holy crap.

We did two rounds of pad work while I was wearing it and I thought I was going to die. I moved so slowly and my shoulders ached from having to throw punches while weighed down. I could not believe that I was carrying that much extra weight around just a few months ago. When he finally took the vest off me, I felt as lithe and graceful as a ballerina and I was astounded at how much more quickly I could move.

Chief has always said that he doesn't care how much I weigh, only that I can move well and strike with force. This, then, was an object lesson in both how far I've come, and how far I have left to go.

Ever so slowly, every so surely, I'm making progress.

Take It To The Limit

My quads are so sore that I'm walking like a robot and hanging on to the railing for dear life every time I go down a flight of stairs. I've been crawling out of my chair every 30 minutes or so to stretch (my officemates are a little puzzled) but it has done very little to unlock the rocks that have taken up residence where my nice, supple muscles used to be. This could make training slightly difficult, especially since tonight I'm in for 90 minutes of one-on-one time with Chief.

We've hit our crazy season at work and my boss had a minor meltdown about my leaving in time to get to class, so for the time being I've switched to twice-weekly private sessions with Chief. Ultimately this is a good thing, but his sessions are far more difficult than his classes.

Chief: I always feel like my classes are harder because we do a lot of jumpsquats and burpees. I don't usually make anyone do those in session.
Me: True, but I still think the sessions are harder because they're tailored to my weak points. At least in class, there are some things that come a *little* more easily.
Chief: Heh. Guess I never thought about it that way. Put your gloves on.

Anyone who knows me will not be surprised to learn that, in a lot of ways, the mental aspect of Muay Thai is far more challenging to me than the physical; Chief is after me constantly to get out of my head, to stop thinking and analyzing and just do. The thing I struggle with the most is pressing myself to work not only to my limit, but also just a smidgeon beyond until the limit itself has moved.

Left to my own devices, I'll see my limit coming up ahead and stop a nice safe distance from it. I don't know when I learned to do that and I don't know what I'm afraid will happen if I get there, but some deep-seated instinct stomps on the brakes as soon as that line comes into view. It's like I'm willing to give up 95%, but for some reason I'm clinging desperately to that last 5%. Looking back, I see that this has been a pattern repeated in every area of my life for some time now.

Chief realized this about me roughly 10 minutes into our very first session (before I realized it about myself, truthfully) and has been trying to coax me a little bit closer to my limit ever since; I've fought him every step of the way. Because the man has the kindness and patience of a saint, he just keeps pushing me forward while completely ignoring whatever protestations I've offered. His standard response, delivered invariably with an impish grin, is Do I care? No, I don't care. Begin.

I've now been studying long enough that my session on Monday night was much more of a "standard" session - alternate rounds of strike drills and conditioning drills rather than short drills interspersed with basic technique explanations. Let me tell you: 90 minutes of striking and conditioning is no joke, especially when the holidays have kept you away from the gym for a couple of weeks - I was "done" less than 45 minutes in.

Here's the thing: During a private session, there's nowhere to hide. Even though the classes at our gym are usually less than ten people and Chief has eyes in the back of his head, I can still slow down or pause for a brief minute here and there. Not so when it's just the two of us, and doubly not so when we're the only two people in the entire gym. I have to keep going until I'm physically incapable of doing so; there are no other options.

Monday night was the first night that I cried at the gym.

About halfway through an exercise designed to strengthen both my balance and the muscles in the back of my legs, my legs felt like they were on fire and my arms were shaking from holding myself up. I dropped my leg in defeat and Chief simply asked me Did you hear the bell? Of course, I hadn't. But I'd seen that limit coming and I was doing everything in my power not to get any closer to it. When Chief came over to adjust my position so that I could begin again, to get my knee just a fraction of an inch higher, I simply dissolved into tears. Tears of anger at him for making me do it, tears of frustration at myself for not being able to do it "perfectly", tears of exhaustion, tears of pain, tears of fear. So I cried, and I clenched my fists around the bag, and I kept going until that stupid bell rang, goddamnit.

I have seen the limit. I have surpassed it. And I have survived! (Apart from the quad muscles, anyway.)

Onward, then, because that line just keeps moving farther and farther out.

Blind

A lot of people seem to be under the impression that since I'm so enthusiastic about Muay Thai, it must come easily to me.

Ahahahahahahahahahaha! Ahem.

Um, no.

Trust me people, this is the most mentally and physically challenging thing that I have ever done.

Yesterday it was all I could do not to cry as I watched myself shadowboxing in the mirror. Not because I was physically exhausted, but because I was fighting so hard against my own brain. I was supposed to be checking my form and making adjustments, but I couldn't see past my shaking legs and the sweat-soaked t-shirt clinging to my torso. Normally I'd take those things as signs of hard work, but yesterday they seemed to scream "WEAK! PATHETIC! UNWORTHY!" with every strike. I looked at the mat for as long as I could before Chief reminded me again that the answers aren't there.

As much as I hate to admit it, re-injuring my knee did at least as much damage to my psyche as it did to my lateral ligaments. It was a horrible, brutal reminder that my body is nowhere near as strong as I imagine it to be. I'm 30, I'm roughly 100lbs overweight, and although I've been active I haven't been athletic in 15 years or so. What the hell am I doing, training to compete in 18 months? What was I thinking, joining a private kickboxing gym?

You can probably guess how things spiraled downward after that.

I've dutifully continued to show up and work my ass off because I'm stubborn as all hell and because I refuse to continue to be my own worst enemy, but it's been difficult. Frustrating, and difficult.

My super-awesome chiropractor / physical therapist cleared me to jump and kick again as of Saturday, but I kept to my (comparatively) safe modifications.

Because I let my fear win.

I was afraid of hurting myself again, afraid that I wouldn't be able to execute the strikes, afraid of looking foolish (my roundhouses look a lot more like this than like this at the moment), afraid of proving that I can't do this, afraid of proving that I can. And the worst part is that I didn't even REALIZE it until  today when I found myself half-assing my way through the "Chopping Down The Tree" exercise. And that made me really angry. I am so goddamned tired of this cyclical battle with myself.

I wish I could say that I suddenly started roundhousing like a pro, or that I landed a series of flawless knee strikes that made my bag partner gasp in admiration, but what actually happened is a lot less spectacular. I hissed and panted my way through the rest of the class with a lot of determination and not quite as much balance. My legs burned, my arms shook, and sweat dripped off every part of my body. I can't say that what happened was pretty, but it was at least resolute.

I sprawled on the mat for awhile after class, not really looking at much of anything, trying to take some measure of pride in the fact that I'd at least given it my all. I wasn't having much success, honestly, when Chief came over to talk to me.

Chief: You're moving better.
Me: What?
Chief: I said - you're moving better. Especially today. You've been working hard and it's starting to pay off. You're getting more comfortable, your body is adapting, and the movements are becoming more natural.
Me: Oh, thanks.
Chief: I know you can't see it, but I can. Good job Amanda. Keep it up.

So apparently I am making progress, but I've been so wrapped up in my own drama that I've been completely blind to it. All that frustration, and anger, and mental anguish... what a waste of fucking time and energy.

Just one more reminder to look up, look out.

Detour

The week before my sophomore year of high school, my class went on an adventure / bonding / team building retreat. It was, to quote Eddie Izzard, ...an activity center, where you climb a tree and eat a sausage and it's kind of… It builds your character so you know about sausages.

Though I'd been at the same school since age 5, I'd been well entrenched as an outcast for the past two years. (Ah 13, the magic age when girls turn on each other and boys turn into knuckle-dragging pack animals) When we were divided up into teams, I was paired up with the Most Hated Girl in School and her three henchmen - all in the name of making us "bond," of course. They were doing an excellent job of ignoring me and I was doing my best not to smack them all senseless until we got to the adventure wall portion of the day.

You know the one... 8' tall wall with no ropes or ladders... get your whole team to the top and revel in your newfound sisterhood.

Or, in my case, listen to the girls who hated me the most count to "3" and then drop me when I was almost to the top. I landed heavily on my left knee and felt the simultaneously strange and revolting sensation of my knee bending to the left, rather than to the front as is normal.  The only thing I could hear as rolled around in pain was the muffled sound of them snickering into their hands.

I learned some unpleasant lessons that day.

The diagnosis was a severe lateral ligament sprain with a little anterior cruciate ligament  stretching thrown in for good measure. I spent the next 8 weeks with my knee immobilized, hobbling from class to class and trying not to think about the fact that my volleyball, field hockey, and horseback riding careers had all come to a screeching halt.

I healed, eventually, but that knee has always been weak. Anyone's who's known me for a good amount of time has seen it go out when I've spent too many hours dancing, or been hiking too long without a break. It's always a reminder of that day.

I tell you this story now so that you may all appreciate my gut-wrenching frustration after my knee gave out again on Friday, in the first 5 minutes of my training session.

It was bound to happen. I've been working myself very hard and the joint is not yet as strong as my mind wants it to be. But as I lay on the mat, looking up at the skylight and waiting for the pain to subside enough for me to straighten my leg and assess the damage, I just wanted to cry; it was such a bitter pill. For a split second, I wanted to wave the white flag. For a split second, I wanted to just limp home and give up. For a split second, I was utterly defeated.

I sat up eventually, and Chief came over to see what had happened. When I explained, he told me in no uncertain terms that I would not be jumping or kicking anymore - I was so afraid that he was going to boot me from the class. Nope, instead he told me that we could use this "opportunity" to build strength in my upper body, my abs, and eventually my weak knee and that then I can jump and kick.

Never before have I been so glad to hear the words more sit-ups for you!

I'm still a little gimpy, but after three days off I was back at the gym tonight working on all of the things that don't involve my knee - trust me, that's plenty. Abs! Biceps! Triceps! More Abs! At least I finally got to break in my new gloves (which were waiting on my doorstep when I limped home Friday night, of course) with a few rounds on the heavy bag.

I'm trying to think of this as a detour, rather than a roadblock. I'm not so much a kickboxer right now as I am a boxer, but I'm working my way back up to the kicking one day at a time.

More Muay Thai

I am so sore. Breathing hurts. Typing hurts. Hell, I think blinking hurts. And yet, I just can't stay away.

I have not spent less than two hours at the gym any day this week and yesterday I had a private lesson with Chief wherein he kicked my ass up and down the gym. Repeatedly. Right after he told me that I hit like a girl.

Since Chief is the first person ever to describe me as "too girly," I re-doubled my efforts and struck with full strength and speed for the first time since I started this adventure. It felt amazing. Granted, my hands and wrists are killing me today from doing that for 45 minutes straight, but there's something both empowering and freeing about unleashing the entirety of your strength in one well-placed strike. When I'd finally done it correctly once, Chief started to chase me around the room calling out combination numbers for me. I dropped my head, touched my gloves to my cheekbones, and for three 15-minute stretches I didn't focus on anything other than the pads he was holding and the numbers that he was calling.

I don't hit like a girl anymore.

I do, however, walk like an old lady because he also made me do evil leg strikes in which I hold one leg up behind me, femur parallel to the floor, and kick at the heavy bag behind me a couple of hundred times (No, seriously. We do things in sets of 50 or 100). Oh, my poor ass.

Are you guys bored hearing about this yet?

I can't help it - studying Muay Thai is such a strange and wonderful new experience for me that it's all I want to talk about. It's been a long, long time since I found something like this, something that I really love doing even though it's physically and mentally exhausting. I work my body to its limits every day and the first thing I think the next morning is "As soon as I figure out how to sit up without using my ab muscles, I'm totally going back!"

And it's not just about the physical exertion; there's something very spiritual about my training too. Maybe it's the fact that I've been in a bit of an introspective phase since my birthday, maybe it's just the nature of martial arts, but every time I leave the gym I take with me guidance for both my Muay Thai technique and my life as a whole. I always thought the "wise martial arts master veiling life lessons as training advice " was just a movie cliche... until Chief started saying things like this:

• Don't look down; the answers aren't there. If you look down you get blindsided. Look up. Look out. That's where the answers are.
• Hit it, hit it, hit it. You're stopping yourself short at the last second. Don't. Follow through. No mater what, follow through.
• Stop thinking. You're in your head too much and it's messing you up. Feel it. Just let go, and let yourself feel.

Hard to believe the man's only known me a week.

Something In The Air

I think they pump something into the air at the kickboxing gym.

In spite of the fact that I was so sore today that I could barely blink, by the time I got home from work I was jonesing for more time on the mats.

Generally, I am not the type of person who wants to go work out. I go to yoga because it's good for me, and it helps me stay limber. I go walking because yoga's not exactly aerobic and, unless I'm on site, I spend most of my day sitting on my ass. Even when I was training for the Honolulu Marathon I didn't want to go running. I did it because intellectually I understood that one cannot run 26.2 miles unless one runs smaller increments at regular intervals, but I didn't wake up in the morning and go "Oooh, I simply have to go running!" 

Work was uncharacteristically mellow today and every time I had a few minutes, my mind wandered to yesterday's lesson; my feet itched to practice the footwork and my arms longed to strike. I wanted to be back in the gym.

Sadly I can't go sign my paperwork until tomorrow or Friday, so no gym for me today. Instead I dug out my jump rope, my yoga mat, and my shuffle as soon as I got home and hit my front walk. I jumped, I high-stepped and shadow boxed, and I did the dreaded push-ups and crunches. 45 minutes later, I collapsed on my front lawn sweaty but energized.

I looked up at the moon for awhile and watched a bat closing in on a moth. I felt my breathing return to normal. I willed my limbs to work long enough to let me stand up.  Once I finally managed to drag myself back into the house,  I was surprised to realize that it was 8:15 and I'd missed the first 15 minutes of Pushing Daisies.

This situation is getting serious.

Don't Look Down

Don't look down; the answers aren't there. If you look down you get blindsided. Look up. Look out. That's where the answers are. -Chief

I had a bunch of things to take care of today, so I took the day off work. I ran a couple of errands, tidied up the house, did some laundry, the usual stuff.

Oh yeah, and I took my first kickboxing lesson.

Let me clarify: I went to a boxing gym and took a 90-minute private Muay Thai lesson with one of the first Americans to be certified by both the World Muay Thai Institute and the Muay Thai Institute of Bangkok.

Holy crap, I hurt in places I didn't know I have. No wussy cardio kickboxing for me*! I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to be able to walk tomorrow.

I've wanted to try Muay Thai for awhile (like... twenty years) and last week I just got it in my head that I'd procrastinated long enough. So I did some research, found a gym that looked promising, and signed myself up for a trial lesson. I'm kind of glad that I didn't think about it too much; if I had I totally would have psyched myself out and not gone.

Fortunately I did go and I had a great time. Well, as great a time as you can have when someone is making you jump rope for 10 hours minutes at a stretch and making you strike while holding 15lb weights. (Hello, first lesson. What the hell will I have to do in the second one?)

I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but I went in with my hackles up.  Gyms do not generally welcome fat girls with open arms and I was walking into a place where pro kickboxers & mixed martial artists train, so I was ready to fight for my right to be there, for my right to try. Much to my surprise, the people there could not have been nicer. Not only did everyone know each other, all of them were also genuinely friendly and welcoming.   

(I should also mention here that the men were all ridiculously, brutally gorgeous. It was all I could do not to get distracted by all the abs and quads and fall flat on my face.)

My instructor, whom I'll call Chief from now on, is both the Chief Instructor and the owner of the gym (and is probably under 35, and also distractingly handsome). After he introduced himself he spent a few minutes talking to me to learn a little bit about my background, as well as why I'm interested in Muay Thai and what I want to get out of my training. The point, apparently, was to determine how to teach me because he says that he's never taught two students the same way.

After he'd made that assessment, he kicked my ass for 90 minutes.

Aside from the jumping rope and the hardest push-ups ever, he also taught me how to strike, how to hook, how to knee, and how to do the basic footwork combinations. I like to think of myself as a fairly graceful and coordinated but people, I have never felt less graceful than I did today. Boxing footwork seems like it should be easy, but it's really not. And boxing footwork plus strikes and hooks? Forget it - I was arms and legs all akimbo. I looked like a complete idiot for most of the lesson, but I was surprisingly ok with that.

Once Chief had reduced me to a sweating, panting pile of jelly-filled limbs, he invited me to stay and train with the class that was about to start. I knew I was hooked when I actually contemplated it, even though I could barely lift my legs to get back up to street level.

Did I mention that the gym is down two flights of stairs? Such a cruel joke.

I think it's safe to say that I loved it - my only concern was how to pay for it. It's a private gym so it's a bit pricey and we all know that I'm broke. Going without food didn't really seem like much of an option so I was stymied. Thankfully, my Dad came through with a solution and made me a deal: he and my mom will split the cost with me if I promise to stick with it for at least 6 months. (If I don't stick with it I get to repay them, with interest)

So that's it then. I'll go in on Friday and sign all the paperwork.

And I won't look down.

_____
*If you read through the Wikipedia page, you'll notice that Frank Thiboutot developed cardio kickboxing because Muay Thai is too dangerous to be done in a health club environment. Yeah. That's what I just signed myself up for. I may be insane.