Gi pants and panting
So, at the end of yesterday’s class, as I was doing back-and-forth-roundhouse with Mitsu, I threw him ippon and I heard a riiipppp. I looked down, and thought, crap: there was a rip along the inner seam running from the knee up about four inches. The hole didn’t get any larger: this pair of pants were sturdier than the other pair that was destroyed on Thursday. That, and Mitsu didn’t put his foot through it with intention of making the hole larger, unlike some people.
Sensei heard the rip, and saw me looking on my pant leg, but didn’t think there was a hole — she couldn’t see it, since it was on my left leg — because, seriously, what’s the likelihood of two gi pants being destroyed within three classes? The line sitting in seiza from around Jose up were tittering, though, since they could see the rip.
I did tell sensei that the pants had ripped after class. She suggested not using bleach when I wash the gi. That, and to get someone to change the pant length, so I don’t step on it when throwing, since that’s what’s causing the rip in the first place.
This one’s probably reparable, though I’m going to Honda today to pick up more pants anyway, since I need pants for the other gi, and since I want to go to Steve’s class this evening. I need to pick up sparring gloves and shin pads, also, for Friday classes.
The other thing was that I was up for the back-and-forth at the end of class through five partners, including being just uke for sensei. I was told after class that the point of all that was to improve my ukemi, and to start working on my cardiovascular endurance.
The current cardio goal is to be able to do technique for, say, half-an-hour continuously without dying at the end of that. I’m told this doesn’t quite compare to, say, half-an-hour on the Ellipse machine, because no one is hitting you while you’re on the Ellipse. Intensity is probably higher, also: much more stop and start, compared to my being able to read the Economist while on the machine. The idea is to get out of breath, but to be able to recover breath while on the relative stop periods. So, I guess I should use the interval training course, with a higher resistance level. This is all for a brown belt test many months from now.
Was there new technique last night? I don’t remember. There’s the variation of hand-through-face, but against roundhouse: you just have to accept that the punching arm will wrap around your head. The hand technique for seio-nage off roundhouse has also suddenly become confusing again.