Bujinkan

Bujinkan tonight reminded me of a scaled down Ninja Warrior *L* We all got in late cause the guy with the keys to let us in was late, so I didn't have much time to stretch. We started off with a sort of rolling (as in ukemi) obstacle course. J. and Jo. both had wooden swords. You'd roll away from the first person's swing, right into the path of a second swing which you also had to avoid by rolling. It was surprisingly exhilarating because Jo. was seriously swinging fast when he came at you. Someone swinging a solid wooden sword at your head at nearly full speed is a great motivator. The key to the whole thing is to roll properly while always keeping your eye on your opponent(s). I'm actually pretty good at rolling like this, so it was no problem for me and was a lot of fun. After a few variations like rolling over a low sword swing and avoiding obstacles when you roll, we got out the kicking pads and did another mini obstacle course, first rolling over two pads stuck on top of each other (about 1 1/2 feet), then jumping over the two pads laid down side to side (so you're rolling over both without touching them). Then you had to do it with one pad length wise, so we were rolling over 3 1/2 feet in one go. That's about 2/3 of my body length so I was really having to stretch to roll over them. If you've ever seen a cat make a flying, low level leap over something, that's what we looked like, only cats don't roll over their shoulders at the end of their rolls. Despite the length, I didn't have too much trouble, but either the lack of proper stretching or just the fact that I don't usually force myself to do flying leaps of over 3 feet on a regular basis meant I really pulled a muscle in my back. I didn't notice it until my adrenaline wore off after class, but by the time I stopped to fill the car with gas a half hour later, it was painful for me to put my seatbelt on and take my shirt off when I got home. I took a muscle relaxant and I'm heat padding it atm in the hopes of not having to deal with the injury tomorrow. *fingers crossed*

After the obstacles course we switched to various moves, none of which were very exciting, though the fun part was switching partners every two moves or so. I managed to avoid all the people I hate training with and generally had a good time, even if I did have to demonstrate something in front of the class (Jack wasn't even there and I still had to teach. heh.) My last partner was the newbie girl and at some point J. walked by and said his usual, "Back straight!" command. I told the newbie that he's been telling me that for twelve years now. She looked disbelieving, and yet five minutes later, he came by to say it again (we'd moved on to a different move just in case you think I wasn't listening to the first command).

J: Keep your back straight!
Me: *gives him a look of annoyance*
J: You didn't think I was going to let you get away with it. How long have you known me?
Me: Too long.
J: *laughs and walks away*
Me to the newbie: I told you.

I swear I actually keep my back straighter when J.'s not around. He has an uncanny ability to catch me when I don't though. Oh well. I got a lot more praise than I'm used to today actually. Jack's a lot more sparing, but J. and Jo. are quite happy to throw out, "Good, Ariana."s left and right. Jo. can really make jumanji look effortless though. I had a hard time of it with this one guy who's a weight lifter and built like a 6ft plus football player. I had to really play with it to break his kamae cause he had this bad habit of putting all his weight on his back foot if I gave him more than an inch of leverage back. Was happy I got to train with Ja. for a bit. He let me play around with a lot of variations on one technique, then threw them back at me, which was fun.