How? Ow! now the Nose Knows!
By tuck 15 May 2002
Part Three: Ow Now, How the Nose Knows
<p>i came in 4th at a semi-full contact aikijutsu tournament in Kobe, Japan in an event called “Randori”. that was cool, but also controlled and if you saw it, sort of lame and silly. it really wasnt an appropriate place to evaluate my level of consciousness. after that, i returned to bates, boxed some more, wrote my thesis, graduated, and got a cool job. it took me about 9 months of working full-time until i started feeling miserable. i felt as though i had abandoned or given up on something important and that now life was just going to speed on by and id never finish exploring my long-held interests unless i did something drastically committed. so i did. the point of this paragraph is to introduce drastically committed, partially because i like the way it sounds, but mostly to prepare readers for the situation introduced next. </p>
<p>full-contact Sanda fights in China: these can get scary. no more helmets sometimes (depending on the venue) and absolutely fierce kicks and punches to all areas of the head and body like muay thai. the most interesting physical element is that you are also allowed to wrestle, which usually involves one combatant being picked clean off the platform and thrown down as hard as possible. ive found it significantly harder to stay relaxed and to enter the already elusive <span class="caps">LRC</span>, which is exactly what i was hoping before i landed here. there are a couple probable reasons for this. one thing is that for the first time, in athletics anyway, im dealing with fear, which isnt easy. before each match, and even some sparring sessions, im nervous and afraid because: A) there isnt much safety; B) im fighting the chinese in a chinese art; C) the chinese are obsessed with face, and whoever loses to the american also loses much face and thusly needs to do everything physically, humanly, and inhumanly possible not to lose; D) these guys have been training and fighting for years and, in fact, were chosen by the government to do so because thats how things are in china; E) the coaches assume that by choosing to participate, you accept the risks, and thus accidents are not their responsibility. </p>
<p>another reason why the <span class="caps">LRC</span> often eludes me here, i think, is the shear quantity of variables my mind has to deal with in this system. kicks, punches, charges, throws, timing, safety, the hooting of angry onlookers, worrying if my opponent knows my knee still hurts from the last kick or throw and will take advantage by targeting it- its absolutely exhausting and it is terribly hard to relax up there (up there being a platform called a lei tai which is raised two feet off the ground, and is a perfect 8×8 meters). im curious about what training and competing would be like if america does something to piss the chinese off again (of spy planes and embassies). the chinese have a hard time separating a countrys government from its citizens. actually, this is a curious fact since the chinese people have been at odds with their own iron fist government for, well, ever. </p>
<p>anyway, mentioned earlier as being critical for success in just about any speed/precision-dependent physical action, both relaxation and the <span class="caps">LRC</span> are vital in Sanda, although id wager it is among the most difficult grounds in existence to actually achieve them. </p>
<p>this is exactly why i need to.</p>
<p>(next half pasted to comment to avoid the 8k max bug)</p>