Cauliflower Ears

The New York Times put out an article today on the MMA culture developing around cauliflower ears.

Now, I can understand the idea of wearing an injury like a badge of honor. I know when I get bruised up, or come back aching all over from practice, I feel like my pain is a symbol of what I’ve accomplished (except when I get nosebleeds – those are too painful to take pride in). Yet, the injuries that have lasted – like the shoulder injury I got last year that still haunts me – have taught me that the actual well-being of my body is more important than my training. God only gave us one body, and we should take care of it, even if we’re training with it.

So my response to the cauliflower culture? The New York Times article says a number of MMA fighters think it’s cool, that it marks you. But I also know MMA guys who think it’s disgusting. I know I, as a girl, find it disgusting. Who wants to whisper sweet nothings into a bloated, crunchy ear? And who wants to have their ear blown up like James Thompson, a.k.a. Tomato Ear? NASTY.

 

Sparring: What I Have Learned as a Short Fighter

Every time I go to a new dojo, someone says something about my height. I’m doing aikido now, and one of the first things the sensei told me was that aikido is good for short people because height and strength are not as important. As a short fighter, I thought I might share a little bit of my experiences in sparring. Keep in mind that I am only a green belt in karate, and if your sensei says something to the contrary of what I write here, trust your sensei. Also, these tips are based on KARATE sparring sessions. I’ve fought some Muay Thai guys, and maybe it’s because they were twice my weight, but some of my usual techniques didn’t work.

I think I’ve been very lucky because my karate sensei isn’t so tall himself, so every now and then he’ll come over and say, “You’ve got short stubby legs like me, so here’s some advice…” Several times he’s told me I’m too short to do a particular kata, and it only makes me laugh.

Kicking:
Being the shorter person in a sparring match means you have to be brave. You might be afraid to get close enough for the other person to kick you because you know that you can’t kick back from too far away. However, think about this. A kick’s power comes in part from the distance the foot/shin travels before it hits you. Think of trying to kick someone who’s standing a foot away from you. Pretty hard, right? Not as effective? Thus, when fighting a taller person, I recommend getting in close. Sure, you’ll take some kicks, but they’ll have less power the closer you are, and you’ll then be close enough for your kicks to be effective.

Get in and get out:
Last year when I went back to karate after a summer of jiu jitsu and frequent running, I was a powerhouse. Not as in totally built, but I had tons of energy for every fight. And I was extremely aggressive, so it wasn’t until my second semester, when I had lost that energy (hard to go running when it’s snowing and I have homework to do), that I realized I’d been relying too much on my stamina. That’s when a Muay Thai guy gave me some advice (from one short person to another): Get in there, get some shots off, and get out. When I fought a tall person, I had the tendency to get in close – and never leave. This was bad because it meant I lost a lot of energy and had little recovery time. So, a smart game plan would be to circle around the ring, bide your time, dodge a bit, and then move in close for your combo attack, then get out and keep your distance. It’s good for recovering, but beware: not every fighter is going to let you go so easily.

Center of gravity:
If you’re shorter, you probably have a lower center of gravity than your opponent. This means that your opponent will have a harder time throwing you, and you’ll have an easier time throwing him/her. Take advantage of this. Learn some throws. Learn how to drop your weight to avoid being thrown.

Beware going to the ground:
If you’re short, you might be small, too. If you are fighting someone heavier than you, who knows jiu jitsu, avoid getting taken to the ground. Even though I learned some jiu jitsu, I eventually got fed up with it because it was just impossible for me to do anything with a guy who weighed 100 more pounds than I did sitting on top of me.

My old instructor told me that it took one of his classmates a year to make someone tap because of the kind of competition they had in their dojo, but if jiu jitsu isn’t your thing, I really don’t encourage doing it. I think it’s an intimate sport with a lot of potential for injury (I wrecked my shoulder my first year, and my sensei cracked two ribs just rolling with someone). Learn how to defend yourself and get back on your feet. Learn to recognize moves and get out of them. And remember, even if you don’t recognize the move, and something hurts, TAP. I tapped once after getting stacked, just because I felt like my neck was about to snap. You can never be too careful.

Don’t underestimate people underestimating you:
This may be more for meeting new fighters than actually fighting them. Or not. I’m not sure. But anyway, here’s an example. Coming to aikido the first time, my sensei first thought I was in middle school (it took some guessing to figure out I was in college) and assumed when I told him that I did karate at school that it was just a couple of months. Later I did tell him I was a green belt, and at one point in class, when a girl winced at how hard my one-hand blocks were, he said about me, “Look at this girl – did you know she was a green belt before? On the street, if you meet someone, how are you going to know if they’re a black belt?” I guess this is more of a story of reminding you to never underestimate your opponent (I was once fighting a 6′ tall guy, and literally standing a foot away from me, he kicked me in the face…gently, because he was a black belt), but I think it can work the other way, too. If you notice your opponent making mistakes because he or she has underestimated you, take advantage of it. Don’t let their stereotyping make you feel like you should conform to some stereotype of what a short fighter is (it’s a psychological thing…like self-fulfilling prophecy). Do your best.

Oh, and last but not least, a tip for point-fighting:
As soon as they say, “Hajime/Start,” MOVE!! If the other guy is taller, he can hit you sooner than you can hit him. So either get going with an attack or get out of the way. I’ve lost too many points because I’ve forgotten to take into account the other person’s range. And it seems to me a good deal of point-fighting depends on the first move. So move.

Okay, those are my thoughts. Questions/comments/corrections/tips are welcome (after all, I’m still learning too). Good luck!

 

The Foot Fist Way

My dad and I went out for his birthday and since we both do martial arts (me: Isshinryu karate, my dad: kempo) we went to see The Foot Fist Way. The only theaters near me that are showing it are in New York City, so we saw it at the AMC on 42nd St. It’s a HUGE theater, with plenty of long escalators and attendants ushering you in and out of the theaters, up stairs, and even down in elevators. It’s twelve bucks a ticket with no student discounts. I didn’t check the concessions stand prices.

The Foot Fist Way tells the story of Tae Kwon Do instructor Fred Simmons and his two lives – the one as a hard-ass Tae Kwon Do instructor, the other as an asshole husband. But when his wife cheats on him, his personal problems start leaking into his life at his martial arts school.

The movie was shot in 19 days with a $70,000 budget, and it shows in the grainy footage and, well, all areas of the movie, but I wouldn’t say that’s to the movie’s detriment. It’s just something to keep in mind, that it isn’t 100% polished. Some scenes could have been shorter, some pauses needed to be longer for comedic impact, etc.

Eh…okay, so I’ll get down to the nitty-gritty. I admit that having my dad around for this movie may have skewed my perspective on how funny it was (you know, sometimes instead of laughing I might have been wondering what he thought of a certain joke and whether I’d get in trouble for it later), but we both generally agreed that it was a strange mix of the funny and the horribly unfunny. A lot of the characters were rude jerks, and Simmons’s marriage problems weren’t as laughable as they might have been.

The New York Times compared it to Napoleon Dynamite and similarly, some of the characters were caricatures, but not quite as abstract as those in ND. Really, I could almost imagine this guy teaching TKD, and I was very, very happy that my sensei, despite being a hard-ass, is nothing like this guy.

So, the movie may not have been as funny as it could have been, but it had that strange oh-my-God-what-are-they-doing-now feeling to it. As a martial artist, I enjoyed watching the goings-on at the TKD school and the occasional fighting (but honestly, when that one guy showed he couldn’t control his violence, Mr. Simmons should have beat the shit out of him). What I missed at the end was a final fight between Mr. Simmons and Mr. Adulterer (or Adulteress, as Simmons calls him) and a little more closure than the final speech Simmons gives that really has nothing to do with anything we’ve learned about the characters. So…maybe the movie finds a good deal of its humor in its irony. The TKD students talk about perseverance and self-control, and the movie is split into sections marked with those headlines – very ironically-titled sections, since Simmons, for example, beats the crap out of a little boy because he thinks the kid’s dad has been messing around with Simmons’s wife Suzie (a perfect mix of the bitchy and the sweetly apologetic).

I still haven’t made up my mind about this movie, so for now I will recommend watching it if you do TKD or another martial art or if you’re looking for a relatively funny film, but try to find it for less than $12 a ticket (which is a ridiculous price for ANY film). Also, please let me know what else you want to know about the film. I’m still torn between saying it definitely wasn’t as funny as pre-release reviews said it was, and saying it was a good short indie film.

 

Chocolate – Prachya Pinkaew’s Touching Martial Arts Film Starring Jeeja, a.k.a. the female Tony Jaa

Directed by Prachya Pinkaew and starring Nicharee “Jeeja” Vismistananda, Chocolate is basically a story about love. Yes, it includes some cool fighting sequences – who wasn’t awed by that scene in the commercial where Jeeja knees someone into what looks like an air shaft? But the sequences are not as hard or as fast as Tony Jaa’s. They felt a tad cautious in comparison and less flowing. Yet not everyone can be Tony Jaa, and I’m happy with Jeeja as Jeeja.

Chocolate’s basic story follows the voluptuous Zin who works for a Thai crime boss. She falls in love with a Japanese yakuza, but her jealous boss promises to hurt her if he ever catches her with that yakuza. Zin sends her yakuza boyfriend back to Japan to protect him. But out of Zin’s affair with the yakuza is born Zen (Jeeja), an adorable autistic girl that takes to mimicking the Muay Thai kickboxers that practice next door. When her mother gets sick, Zen and her childhood friend try to gather money for her mother’s medication by collecting the debts owed to Zin. Of course, no one wants to listen to an autistic girl and her roly-poly friend, so Zen resorts to violence for the sake of her mother.

The storyline is much better than a typical martial arts movie’s. Compare this story of an autistic girl protecting her mother to the director’s previous films Ong-Bak and The Protector with Tony Jaa. I understood Tony Jaa’s quests for the stolen Buddha statue and elephant in each movie, but I won’t deny that people laughed in the theater when he demanded his elephant back from the villain.

The first part of Chocolate, before the fighting started, actually moved me – although I did get a bit antsy waiting for the fighting to start. The beginning has several well-paced and well-placed montages overlaid with sweet, though faintly old-fashioned, music.

Once the movie ended, I realized how much it had relied on family dynamics, and how much I had appreciated watching Zin transform from a seductive beauty to a loving, cancer-ravaged single mother. The heartbreak at the end for me was realizing that Zen was just a girl defending her mother; she never thought of herself as a martial artist.

I would recommend this movie to anyone. I was a little disappointed with the fighting sequences, but I realize that once you’ve seen Tony Jaa fight, even a girl touted as the female Tony Jaa can’t match him. Not so much because she’s a girl, but because he’s Tony Jaa. Nonetheless, I enjoyed watching someone in a dress take out a gang of bullies after catching a knife in her hand, and I hope Jeeja goes on to make more powerful martial arts films, films that address the plot as much as they do the fighting.

 

The Foot Fist Way

A new movie called The Foot Fist Way is coming out soon…. I’m really excited!

WARNING: FOLLOWING LINK IS FOR A RED BAND TRAILER. DON’T WATCH IT IF YOU’RE NOT MATURE ENOUGH.

Favorite quote:
(On Tae Kwon Do) “It’s the best of all martial arts.”
“I hear jiu jitsu’s really good for balance.”
“No. Jiu jitsu sucks.”

Hahahahaha…

(P.S. Before anyone mistakes my meaning, I am indeed aware of jiu jitsu’s amazingness.)

 

Learning how to fall

Updated: 8/1/08
One of the most essential things you can learn in a martial arts class is how to fall properly. I didn’t think I’d be able to remember all the rules in an actual falling situation, but last Saturday proved that with enough practice, you can save yourself some serious injury.

Some things to remember when falling:
1. Don’t let your head hit the ground. This is the most important thing you can do. If you’re falling backwards or onto your side, tuck your chin against your chest. Falling forward is different – turn your head sideways so you don’t smash your face onto the ground. And catch yourself on your forearms – it hurts like hell but it’s better than catching yourself with your nose.

2. Don’t try to break your fall by putting just your hands out. You might break your wrist. If you fall sideways, slap the ground with your arm out to that side at about a 45 degree angle with your palm down so you don’t break your elbow. This will absorb some of the impact into your arm. If you fall backward, use both arms to break your fall. Remember: do not use just your forearms for sideways/backwards falls, or just your hands, because you may break your elbow or your wrist.

3. If you fall backwards, round your back. I don’t know if this is a steadfast rule, but it’s saved me some pain.

4. Practice and have an instructor look at your falls. It isn’t enough for me to just tell you these things. Your body has to get used to it, you have to see what it looks like yourself, and you have to get used to trusting yourself during a fall. If you’re afraid or you panic, you will probably mess up, so practice the falls on a mat or other soft, safe surface. And have an instructor help you.

How learning how to fall saved me:
In the most embarrassing fall ever – honestly, I haven’t accidentally fallen in soooo long, not even when the sidewalks were coated in ice – I fell after doing an exaggerated roundhouse kick through a kicking pad (trying to build on advice my instructor was giving me) and just fell onto my side. I didn’t remember ALL the rules of falling – heck, I fell on instinct alone, and somehow, I landed on my side, chin tucked, with my arm out. One problem: I had my arm rotated so my elbow “hit” the ground, but my arm was straight so my forearm took the bruising. Now all I’ve got is a nasty bruise and a sore shoulder, but imagine what might have happened had I not been taught how to fall. A broken elbow, maybe (I had a LOT of momentum), or whiplash, or a concussion if I hadn’t tucked my chin.

So, the moral is, take it easy, and learn how to fall.

 

Shoulder Injury Update

A while ago I wrote about a shoulder injury I’d gotten (way back in November ‘07), and I got a few concerned comments, so I thought I’d update!

My shoulder is almost better. I re-injured it – obviously – during our karate promotion, though not to the extent that it was the first time. I basically have my full range of motion back. The bad thing is I spent all of January not doing ANYTHING with it, because even doing a couple weights made it hurt, or even going on an elliptical. Now that I’m back at karate, I’m trying to build up muscle there again (not like I had much to begin with anyway) so that push-ups don’t kill me so bad. But you know what’s worse? Jumping jacks. Getting my arm to go above my head was the hardest part of recovery. I should be going to see the school’s trainer soon to get advice on some rehab exercises, but I’m almost better! As in, I can actually sleep on my shoulder at night. Though when I stretch it (esp. rotate it) I can hear tons of popping noises; my doctor says it’s cause the muscles aren’t exactly balanced yet (overcompensating…not moving enough…something like that).

As for going back to jiu jitsu, I feel SO guilty because I haven’t gone back (but how dumb would I be to go back before I’m fully healed?). I’m hoping to go back after spring break, maybe once a week. I think I really want to take judo (although it hurts like hell to get thrown) to take advantage of my being so short (lower center of gravity, yo!). And jiu jitsu – well, I think I haven’t gotten as much as I could have out of that class, since I can’t do much during a fight. BUT the nice thing is that learning the moves teaches me at the same time how to get out of them and to expect them, even though it’s really frustrating to not be able to do stuff (esp. because, I think, brute strength might compensate for my shortness, but I haven’t got that).

In other news: We’re doing a lot of Muay Thai now, including the clinch, and knee and elbow strikes. We’re supposed to be balanced fighters, though we got ripped apart today for slacking off on our Isshinryu basics – because, that’s what we’re there to train for.

 

Why Haven’t I Seen These Movies Yet?? Chocolate and Mirageman

Chocolate

What looks like an amazing Thai movie with a kickass female fighter (actress “Jeeja” who apparently trained five years for this role). The trailer says “real injuries” – although it isn’t a requirement for it to be real for me to see a martial arts movie, it sure helps. The movie was already released in Thailand, to my knowledge, but has yet to reach my computer screen.

Mirageman

An amazing Chilean movie that I’ve been dying to see – when does this come out in Chile? I love how everyone gets kicked in the face during the commercial. I also love one of the taglines… Se acabó el hueveo.

Also, I have no idea what on earth is up with these two related Barney clips. Lol, Barney kills Chapulín Colorado. Lol, Mirageman beats the SHIT out of Barney.

And…

Translation: Fuck the panic button.

 

Guilt

How do you deal with guilt from hurting someone during karate? Not only do I think my various injuries this semester (want a list? I love lists: hyperextended right elbow, sprained left ankle, sprained toe, swollen left foot (still don’t know what’s wrong with it), plantar fasciitis, left shoulder strain, whiplash, pulled right calf muscle (and it’s on the verge of pulling again) not to mention all the pieces of skin that my running shoes have ripped off my feet, and all the bruises – I feel like a whiner though because one of the girls ripped a bunch of tendons in her knee last semester – so things could definitely, definitely be worse) have given me cause enough to quit karate, but now I’m finding that whenever I hurt my opponent (to the point that the pain lasts beyond our fight), I feel incredibly guilty.

Case in point – recently I…well, I’m not sure what happened, but I somehow smacked into my friend’s arm, and she ended up with an extremely sore shoulder. And now, after a point-fighting match, my other friend is telling me that her stomach still hurts occasionally, ppbly from the roundhouse I landed there (I told her to go to the health center asap because internal injuries are no fun). Even thinking about it makes me sick that I did those things, but then one part of me says that when you do karate, you have to be prepared to get hurt. And then I went on a guilt management website that recommended thinking of whether or not I’d forgive someone else for doing the same to me, I realized that hell yes, I forgive the guy who got me in a double arm bar that resulted in a whole night of staying up with the pain in my shoulder. Because it was an accident… And these things I did were accidents, too – I didn’t mean it, and I pray to God that it’s nothing serious.

How do you guys deal with guilt? Do you even feel any – is an accident just not worth the effort of being guilty?

(P.S. I’m not quitting karate if I can help it.)

 

Yet another injury…

Well, unfortunately, I have to add to my chronicles of injuries yet again. This is for you all to be wary and extra careful…

Okay, so I’m a small person, not extremely strong, not made of steel.

I got put into a double arm bar during jiu jitsu, which involves the other guy squeezing me at the shoulders with his knees to trap me and then grabbing one of my arms and doing an arm bar (with that single arm – he stressed that a double arm bar is in fact NOT a double arm bar). Problem was, he never got to grabbing my arm because something inside the left side of my chest made a crushing/popping sound. No pain at first, just a weird, nauseous feeling almost. Half an hour later I couldn’t move my left arm without pain. I spent the entire night awake from the pain, too stubborn to go to the hospital. In the morning, I went to our college’s health center and was diagnosed with a shoulder strain (thankfully not a shoulder separation, which is what I feared, though I had no bruising or visible swelling) and whiplash symptoms.

Fucking whiplash. That’s the worst part. Trying to move my arm and having the whole back of my neck freak out with pain. Apparently, I’ve only got soft tissue damage, and what probably happened was that all the muscles spasmed up to my neck when I strained my shoulder, resulting in whiplash.

I wanted to ask my doctor when I can go back to karate (thankfully I have a week off before classes start again) but I was scared of the answer I’d get. I think once my neck gets better I’ll be good to go and do at least some stuff. And once I can lift my arm above my head I’ll be completely better =D I’m pretty sure I didn’t hurt any muscles in my arm at least…my upper back might be another story…

Anyway, I’m thinking about quitting jiu jitsu. Yes, I know it’s a coward’s way out to quit once the going gets tough, but I’ve reasoned it out as 1) I’m too small to pull off most of the moves (I can’t hold a guard, can’t do a triangle, and I pull the muscles in my legs a lot just trying to do some stuff – basically, the only thing I’m good at is defending myself) 2) I’m too light (everyone else in the class is heavier for sure) 3) the other guys have nearly crushed me several times (and once I had to tap because I thought a guy, after he’d stacked me, was about to snap my neck just by trying to pass my guard) 4) I care more about karate, and if I’m going to get seriously injured, I’d rather it be from karate.