laughing our way through martial arts lessons

How can we manage to smile and laugh our way through awkwardness, fear and pain? My beginner adult martial arts student cohort and I did just that in our first two weeks of martial arts lessons at Revolution Martial Fitness! After my first class, I found myself energized and smiling - like a real big, natural smile that comes from deep within and you cannot stop - which was quite a relief after many days of some family crises that were weighing me down. What was almost better than our first classes, was the humorous and insightful dialogue that took place via email after each class. 

We tried to remember what we actually did or, more precisely, the names of the things we tried to do. Was that the rear naked choke, the Americano arm lock (Wait, isn't that a coffee drink?), the crazy horse, modified mount, dismount, swimmer thingy? And it just got worse from there. I know now it will be useless for me to try to remember all of the names for everything we are trying to learn, which is a little hard for my order-loving mind to accept. But I'm learning to just go with it. Maybe we're back to that whole "relaxed control" idea. Hmm.. Something I need to learn? Yes. So, after our group tried to collectively recall the names of what we actually did, we went on to talk about how what we actually did made us feel - before, during and after. Sometimes long after! We definitely came to the first class with a mix of excitement, nervousness and uncertainty. The more experienced students - some of them being all of 13 since this is a Teen/Adult class - were fabulous at introducing themselves, offering us tips during the class and being eager to partner with us. After a lot of bag work in the first class, my entire upper body felt sore for days afterward. In addition to the martial arts techniques that we tried and couldn't remember the names of, we did a lot of different kinds of burpees, push-ups and sit-ups in the first two weeks of classes. We even did ab exercises involving pads. As Sensei Paul said, "Abs are more fun when you are hitting something!" And for my Ultimate Bootcamp campers who are reading this, I'm learning some new moves to bring to bootcamp, including a new burpee because you know how much I love all types of burpees! All of this left us feeling sore, humble, grateful, proud and amused. My cohorts have much more to say about it and they've shared some witty and insightful comments in these first two weeks, which I've included below with their permission. Thanks for writing. Thanks for being on the journey with me. Keep sharing and, more importantly, keep doing better because you know you can!  Peace over power :)

Some of my cohorts insights:

• I feel energized, strong and ready for more! 

• All of the students were encouraging, helpful and very open.

• This is both a challenge and an exciting experience for me. Never thought I'd find myself trying it out again.

• The opening workout was brutal for me... I was definitely tired out after the first type of push up, never mind the twenty variations that followed... So we learned and laughed today... That's at least two of the things we are supposed to do daily, right?

• I think the ground fighting was a little awkward at first, but then I thought about how I just spent the whole weekend on the ground with my 1 and 3 year old nieces crawling and jumping all over me, and that wasn't awkward at all.  I found the most awkward part was getting on top of the person, but then once you start going through the drill and focus on the technique, you sort of forget about the awkwardness.

• Okay. Teeth brushed, extra deodorant on, body spray on (in case deodorant stops working), toenails painted. Yup, I think I'm ready for karate class! 

• If nothing else, I am having fun being surrounded by people with great attitudes about learning. I mean just this week, [my partner] and I almost made out while learning to drop our weight on each other. Not too awkward, right?  Today, [my partner] tried to strip me. She started with my shirt, then my pants!

• Okay, so call me weird, but the whole "mounting" thing didn't really bother me at all. Not sure what that says about me because I thought FOR SURE that it would freak me out. Maybe it was the whole choking thing that made me forget about the mounting thing. Or maybe it was just because [my partner] was such an awesome partner - always keeping me laughing. I'm sure that was actually what relieved any awkwardness.

• I am inspired everyday at RMF... I thought it was tons of fun and I learned how I must correct my technique in order for it to be effective. PROGRESS! 

• What I can appreciate about our work outs and body strengthening is the pain I have to show for it afterwards. Never mind all of the fun in between!

And finally...

• Dawna, make sure you wear pants!