Two thoughts about Kali and a rhetorical question about something else. The something else first.
Flexibility. I'm often sore in the morning, when I first get out of bed. My low back usually, but quite often my arms, neck, legs, hips, shoulders, and other parts are sore instead/as well. It's not arthritis, fortunately, and it's seldom in my joints; it's muscular. It eases when I get up and get moving or stretch out some, which makes me wonder -- if I were more flexible to begin with, would I still get sore like this? I'm not very flexible now, and I never have been, even though I work at it all the time. Not enough, obviously, and I always mean to go to some of the yoga classes at the gym to improve my stretchiness, but it never seems to happen. I might actually be going backwards now, since while I try to stretch, I do work out and lift weights regularly, and that's building muscle and probably making me tighter in the process.
So if I really got more flexible, would I not have the morning aches and soreness? Or would I still have them just as I do now, from overwork in Kali or the gym; just in different places? I'd really like to work on my flexibility too, since I kick pretty well in Kali, but low and medium only; I don't have the flexibility to kick quickly while aiming high. I can get my foot up there, but I have to lean back in a weird angle, or stretch sideways a lot, and that makes my move so slow and lacking in power that it's pointless to even try it.
A question that leads me to my next topic...
Kicking in Kali. We don't work on kicking that often, but we've done it once every other month or so during the 8 months I've been at it. It's not a real thrust of the style; we do more with weapons and open hand, and when we do kick it's usually as a support to open hand or knife. It's very sneaky kicking too, almost all aimed at the opponent's feet or knees, meant to trip or cripple or distract them in order to open them up to other killing blows. Higher kicks are allowed, since you can basically do any sort of move in Kali, but our style is designed for anyone to do, not just super athletic young men (who lose all ability to keep doing the leaping kicks once they get older and their knees start to give out) so we don't spend much time learning moves that are real high impact on our bodies. (Most of what we do is very high impact on the opponent's body, but that's different.)
I enjoy kicking in Kali though, and it feels very natural and easy to me, now that I've learned the basic forms and techniques. I've got the reflexes to do it well, hitting and countering other kicks (which is what opens them up for my shots to land), and I have very quick feet, at least as compared to the others in class. The odd part is that I'm either very good, or everyone else is very slow, since I can best far more advanced students in kicking, students who easily beat me in open hand, or stick, or knife, or just about anything else we do.
It was actually surprising this week, since we hadn't done any kicking in a couple of months, and we hadn't really sparred any last time; just worked on form and drills and such. This time it was all kicking, toe to toe, so to speak, and while I was much faster than the first guy I went against, we were basically just warming up and working on some forms, so I figured he wasn't trying very hard yet. I found out differently when we rotated partners after ten minutes, and I was paired with the most senior student there. He's very good and very quick with his hands, and I expected him to be better than me kicking. It was therefore a great surprise when I pretty much ate him alive for the first five minutes. I could land just about any kick I wanted, I could easily dodge or parry or counter his kicks, and he seemed to be wearing cement boots, compared to the snap and speed my kicks had.
He improved greatly as we went though, and he soon started getting in some hits, and I was dancing around and working much harder so I started to tire and slow down. After ten minutes things were more even, but when you consider how much faster and more skilled he is at open hand and stick, it was damn near unsettling to be better than him anything in Kali. It was fun too, though honestly I wished he and the others I went against that night had been better, and that I could have gone some against the Gura.
I hadn't really thought about it in the past, but reflecting on the kicking stuff I realized that I actually prefer going against someone who is better than me (as long as they're not so far ahead that I'm just helpless). I like the challenge, I like being pressed and having to raise my game, and I enjoy getting my shots in more when I have to really try to land them. Most of the time Thursday I was in control and landing hits at will, and soon found myself experimenting, trying odd angles, trying to do double kicks and parries rather than just dodging and taking sure hits, etc. It made it more fun and more of a challenge for me that way, and allowed them to get in some hits as well.
The reason for my skill in this, oddly enough, seems to be the soccer I played all through my youth. I haven't kicked a ball in years, and haven't played any organized soccer since I was about 14 (when I got sick of practices and of always being the one good player on bad teams) but somehow the foot awareness and speed and agility persist. I do different style kicks than most of the others too, ones no one else does, and as Malaya and me analyzed them, we realized that they were all soccer kicks. Passing the ball across my body with my instep, shooting a kick sideways with the side of my foot, being able to kick backwards and hit things with my heel, etc.
More than just specific kicks though, I've got more awareness of where my feet are than other people. I'd never thought of it that way, but that's what the Gura said when I asked her, and she said that most people require a lot more practice to kick accurately and with control, and that most have a lot of trouble doing it left footed and right footed. I'm better right footed, I've realized, but that's mostly because my left leg doesn't have the fine motor skills to kick exactly where and as hard as I want it to. I suppose that's what the others feel like with both of their legs though, so I can hardly complain.
The funny part is that my footwork for other things in Kali is awful. Well, it's improved a great deal and I'm far better than I was at the start, but I've still got a long way to go, and it took me six months to gain any ability at sliding when I walk, keeping level and not bobbing up and down, keeping on my toes and curving around people as I move backwards, etc. My alleged foot location awareness didn't help a bit there, and my bouncy, fast strides (that might have been developed in soccer?) have actually held me back, since I'm constantly having to force myself to take smaller steps in Kali, to lift my feet up less, to keep my weight more on my heels instead of moving forwards so quickly on my toes, etc. I've mentioned it before, but the people with a background in dance are the ones who can move in the Kali-style right away, and they have far better footwork and body posture than the rest of us. It doesn't seem to help them much with kicking though, except that they can keep their balance centered and spin to do heel kicks and sweeps pretty well.
Moving very slowly. One final thing about Kali, that applies to other athletic endeavors. In another class last week we worked on basic stick fighting techniques. We stressed the fundamentals, since most of us have been getting very lazy about those and instead of doing the full blocks and counters, we're doing sliding hits, backhand strikes, and other shortcuts. Gura wanted us to get back to the basics though, so back we went, and in addition to those she had us move very slowly. It was hard, oddly enough.
You'd think that swinging a stick across your body forehand and backhand wouldn't be hard, but when you do it at about 1/10th full speed, you realize how much you usually use momentum to cheat on form and balance. Try it with a golf swing, or tennis, or baseball, or whatever sport you've got handy; do your normal swing, then try it again at about half that speed, then again even slower, and so on, until you are barely moving. Feel how your balance is off to one side or the other, how you lean, how your posture goes to shit in one direction or the other, etc.
I wouldn't have believed it, but it took me probably an hour of leading and throwing very slow attacks until I managed to completely correct my balance problems completely. And as I fixed those, the Gura told me to work on my posture, to stand up straighter, to keep my head up, to not lean sideways while doing this or that, and so on. So I spent probably 75% of the class swinging at my partner, compared to 25% receiving, and even though we were moving at less than a walking speed, and I was moving my arms and stick as if I was underwater, I was simply dripping sweat the whole time. Going slow and trying to keep good form was far more tiring than taking half speed swings with my usual posture, and I was constantly having to adjust my balance, lean back, stand up taller, think about where my left hand was to balance me better, and on and on.
I've got no idea if that would work the same way doing it with a tennis racket, but it would be interesting to find out. Not that I play tennis, but I think a lot of players would be shocked at how much they found out about their poor form if they moved super slowly and learned how their speed and momentum were keeping them in line, while disguising their structural flaws. We've not done stick stuff at normal speed since then, but I'm curious to see how I'll do, and if the slow motion stuff will carry over and help my form and balance.
