Tuesday afternoon, my Sanda team was joining the acrobatics class. Normally, I would have hated that because I cannot do anything acrobatic at all, but at that point, anything sounded better than another session with the sandbags. Together with all the acrobatics monk-like kids with their heads shaved, us, the punk-like Sanda team, made all sorts of crazy tornado jumps and somersaults. Everyone but me, that is...
I was not even able to land on my legs doing a normal somersault, but everyone was polite and no one laughed at me. That being said, some of the guys (especially the coaches) had an amazing flexibility and jumping skills allowing them to easily perform 3 somersaults in a row. It was really impressive to see. While practicing Karate in Japan, I was always somewhat (while knowing my weak points) confident about my skills, but here everything I do seems to be nothing compared to what they can do.
After having had a 15 minute break and going back, the Sanda team left the acrobatics class. Everyone was now wearing gloves and kneepads. Yes, finally it was time for some sparring! My body was already full of muscle pain and I was not able to use my body as fast and accurately as I wanted to, but I still tried my best. I sparred the 17-year old guy that has been my partner for the last few days. He had far more speed than me, and also had more strength. His high kicks were so fast that I was almost too late to block them, but everytime his shins hit my arm he would show me a painful face. I remembered Michael telling me that they don't train their shins and arm-bones here. That might be their only weakness, I thought. I was far less skillful than him, but at least I have hardened my bones by kicking and punching heavy bags and iron pipes. While starting to get some confidence, though, the guy punched me full in the face 3 or 4 times. So this was what it was like to get punched in the face. I tried to kick him back to the face, but he took my leg and tried to throw me down. I grabbed his T-shirt to prevent myself from falling, which resulted in some clinch fighting.
After something like 30 seconds, the guy said he was tired and didn't want to go on. The coach gave him a hit with his stick, but he didn't stand up until a few minutes had passed. When he finally stood up, he had enough again after 10 seconds. Things kept going on like that for a while until he tried to give me a low kick which I blocked with my shin. He said that he had hurt his leg and was not able to go on.
Having lost my opponent, I watched the other guys sparring. Their punches and kicks looked very wild and uncontrolled, but speedy and powerful at the same time. They hit each other in the face with full power. When sparring in Karate, you normally don't use so much strength in order to improve your skills, but here they seemed to not care about that. Whenever there was something about the sparring that the coach didn't like, he would stare at the students with his scary eyes, and hit them with the stick so that they would try better next time.
My first experience of sparring in Sanda made me feel the big difference between styles. People often like to wonder which style is the strongest, but I realised that that is not what is important. Without knowing each other's style, things can go wrong and accidents might occur.
0 件のコメント:
コメントを投稿