On Wanting to Go Higher

Today was a very frustrating practice. I think it was made more frustrating because of other frustrating things in my life recently. I haven’t been made truly angry at a practice in a long, long time, and I’m hoping that I can change this emotion into something positive.

Basically, I pulled my groin in my left leg on Monday, so any sort of forward lunging motion is off the table. I still have the mobility to walk without pain, and to do some limited stretches, but anything that involves lunging forward from my left leg is still really painful, so that eliminated 70% of practice for me.

So instead of doing the drills and the keiko, I practiced men-uchi by myself, over and over and over until the floor became too energetic for there to be any room for me to safely practice. From there I watched, thinking about what sort of drills I might be able to do that do not involve lunging and I remembered a stationary drill we did occasionally in Canada. Motodachi would hit for men, and the practitioner would strike suriage-dou left and right over and over and over. The speed of the drill could be adjusted for skill level either very fast or very slow.

I thought this would be a perfect drill, considering I couldn’t lunge, I’ve wanted to, at the very least practice suriage for a while now, and it didn’t have to be a complicated drill that would necessarily mess up what I’ve already achieved with men-uchi.

So I waited until the last 7 minutes of practice to ask to do this drill. I explained how it works and even demonstrated and I was flatly refused. I was told to just keep hitting men. I was shocked, but I did it, until someone else cut in to take my spot.

Anyway, the continued refusal to even consider allowing me to practice anything other than men is getting very frustrating. I think it’s compounded by the fact that when I was beginning in Canada I was told up front that if I wanted to learn something, I needed to ask for it.

I’ve been patiently accepting that my teachers here want me to excel in basic training before I attempt anything more complicated, but to not even allow such a simple drill as standing in one place and striking the same spot again and again?

After practice I commented that my basic men-uchi must still be very bad. I was told that no, no, my men-uchi was very beautiful and everyone thought so. I asked why, then, if my basics are so beautiful, can I not learn something else? I was told that those things are very difficult.

What if they are difficult because we don’t practice them?

In any case, it seems the only way I’ll be able to convince anyone to let me practice anything other than basic men or kote (they won’t even let me practice basic dou) is to step up my practice and act like a san-dan. Ni-dan, it seems, is not good enough.