Day 6: Second Fight Critique

Yes, this post is late. Sorry for that.

Anyway, Saturday was our second fight video/critique. We learned knife and club choreography separately in the morning, then had an hour after lunch to practice the two together before performing. It was rather quick, learning the techniques of two such vastly different weapons a day and a half before performing a fight with them. Maya was my partner this time, and she's my size, which helped a lot with targeting. We were doing very well during the rehearsals, getting the choreography down and telling our story at the same time. Then, the moment we were about to go on, we both completely blanked on the moves. The fight that followed wasn't necessarily the worst that we could have done, but we certainly weren't at our best. We ended up going a bit slow, to the point where it was a little painful watching the fight on video after it was over. It didn't help that it was the end of our first week and everyone was completely exhausted, so energy was low all around. Oh, and I completely blanked on a particular move, and Maya had to repeat a step for me so I could try to remember what came after that point. Ugh. Not the best fight in the world, but I'll work harder next time.

At the end of the day, it was time to celebrate our first night off. We went to a local bar called O'Houlie's, which has karaoke a few nights out of the week. When we arrived, there were only two or three people who were alternating in turns before we kind of took over. I got up there with Jonathon, one of the other students, to sing REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know It" (we both knew it by heart and didn't have to look at the screen- embarrassing) and break the ice for the other students to go up and sing. Or, attempt to sing. Most of us from the school were there, and we were all exhausted, but it was a very fun time. I was too tired to write a blog at that point, so.... reason for this being a day late.

Day 5: "We'll have us a knife fight."

As y'all probably can guess, today's class involved learning weaponry techniques. However, the title of this post is not *entirely* accurate, simply because we learned how to use a knife AND club. I just really wanted to use a Kill Bill quote. Knife class was in the morning, and (as trite as I surely must sound by now), it was great. I love how tight and quick all the movements are. It's almost like dancing, but with slightly more risk. Obviously, we used prop knives that were nowhere near sharp, but they still were made from aluminum and would not be fun to be accidently hit with. My roommate, Maya, and I will be working more together tomorrow, and probably performing together the fight which will be filmed and critiqued by Dave. We are moving at a much faster pace now that we know the fundamentals, and they are trying to prepare us for the pace of the real world. Maya is much closer to my size than my last partner, and we move in a similar fashion, so we are both excited to work on this fight tomorrow. We'll be starting out the choreographed fight with clubs, though, which (for us) are sticks made from rattan. The clubs use much broader and bigger action and movement, but it was fun to do that as well. To compare the two styles would be akin to comparing apples and oranges. I'm definitely looking forward to the combination of the two in the fight tomorrow. Of the two, though, I think I was a little better with the knife. But then, I'm not the instructor!

Once we got back to the hotel, I showered and proceeded to wait around for some folks to get back from running errands and such so we could watch a movie. Unfortunately, they sat down to start watching it at about 10 PM when we were originally supposed to start at 8. On that note, I still need to see Kick-Ass.

After such an exhausting day, I need to get some sleep so I can do it all over again tomorrow.

Day off Sunday! And by then, it definitely will have been earned.

Day 4: Rolling, and.... ACTION!

Y'all will be glad to know that my head did NOT hurt at all today, despite the events of Wednesday's class!

The first half of the day was spent listening to Dave discuss the art of playing to the camera. Basically, it was a discussion on how to do our job and look good doing it, no matter where the camera is. After lunch, we got our first video critique. It was really nice to see ourselves on video for the first time so we could see where we aim our punches and kicks in relation to the lens. Despite whatever looks good from our perspective, we have to always make sure that it looks right from the perspective of the camera. Jan (pronounced "YEN".... yes, like the currency) was my partner today for the choreographed fight. He's from Denmark, and yes, he's the same guy involved with the incident from yesterday, but he was a good fight partner and not hard to communicate with. We were the 8th group to perform out of 29 (yes, that many). I actually almost lost a contact mid-scene while we were filming, but recovered it when we were through.

Overall, our fight was not bad. My targets were definitely off, as were his (big height difference was a contributing factor, and I just plain need to practice), but we definitely showed intent in everything we did and had good energy throughout the scene. In fact, we had it to the point where Dave and Jason said they were exhausted just watching it. They gave us some great notes, and I'm really anxious to start working on the areas in which I need to improve. We start weapons tomorrow- knife and club- so we all need to be at our best in the morning!


Oh, and a little disclaimer about the video below.... everyone in my class has been trained to do that stunt. That was the first of the three hits I took, so the particular one that was recorded was done correctly and didn't hurt. So please.... don't try anything you see or hear about on this blog at home.

Day 3: Dazed and Confused

I'll explain the title in a minute.

We did flips, rolls, and tosses today! Being a lightweight person myself, I am very easy to throw around, as evidenced by the exercises of this morning. Obviously, I went flying a lot, and it was a great time. We also worked a lot on strangling and hair-pulling. My partner for that was great to work with, and we ended up improvising a lot. For example, he threw me down on the ground with one hand grabbing my hair, and I went into a break fall. He then picked me up and dragged me, kicking and screaming, across half of the room. And guess what, Mom and Dad? Since we did it right, it didn't hurt one bit! We broke for lunch, and some of us ate outside since we were having such beautiful weather.

This is the point where I explain my title.

After lunch, we did some more tossing, and I was thrown onto mats several times. Again. And it was fun. Again. Then we moved on to body blocks, which entail one person running across the room at another, jumping into the air, extending themselves so they are flat and parallel to the ground, and slamming into the person who was just plain standing there. I won't tell you the magic trick behind this move, but take note that it's very cool looking and, if done correctly, does not hurt one bit. As a matter of fact, there's really not supposed to be that much contact after the initial hit that makes both parties fall over. So I was standing in line in front of the guy from Denmark. Very nice guy, and while we were having light conversation and watching the others he told me he weighed 95 kilos. I looked it up, and that's roughly 209 pounds, though I didn't know it at the time. So I went and flew into the person in front of me in line, and did well, got up, no problem. Turn around to be the victim for the guy behind me, when I looked and saw who it was. Luckily, he did it right, and I was smiling as I got up at the end. It was quite a hilarious moment, if I do say so myself. And yes, ladies and gentlemen.... we have that video!



Now, it so happened that he was the one to fly into me the second go round, which was also fine, and the third.

Ah, the third.

That's when things went awry.

He ended up jumping too high, hitting his hip against my head. When I got up, Mike (one of the instructors in the room) helped me over to a chair because I wasn't walking well and everything looked a little funny. I'll also have y'all know I was grinning like an idiot. I only had to sit out for maybe 30-45 minutes to get my bearings again, but I was able to get back up for the final fight sequence choreographed by Dave for us to perform in front of a camera tomorrow. Don't worry, family- it takes more than a 209 pound Danish man to keep me down! But, seriously, it was an accident. They happen. He was very apologetic, and there was no lasting damage, and no concussion. The fight is going to be very cool, and I practiced with some fellow students this evening at the hotel before tucking in for the night.

Day 2: For every action, there's an equal and opposite REACTION

Never in my life have I experienced such complete and all-pervasive soreness as I did this morning. There were fewer of us at breakfast when 7:30 rolled around, and every one of us in there was having issues with the whole movement thing. We found out later, this means we were doing things right in class. I personally had not, before today, felt my neck be this sore; I actually woke up this morning and began to wonder if I was getting sick, since my throat felt strange, before I realized that the discomfort was the result of the front of my neck being sore. Now, what did we do when we got to class at 9 AM? We stretched, and warmed up, and, as you may have guessed from the title of this blog post, we worked on reactions to the punch we learned yesterday, as well as more variations on that same punch. After an uncertain start, I finally started getting it- there's so much to remember in the space of a split section, AND we're supposed to be in character the whole time. By the way, this program kind of has an acting class built in, which is nice.

We did maybe 7 different punches, 8 different kicks, and reacted accordingly to everything. We partnered with several different people. I got a pretty good mix of good and bad partners, though I do wish I'd had a few more of the former, since I love being challenged. And since that's a big reason I'm here. It was really nice getting to work with different people, and adjusting to everyone's styles (and heights!). I almost got punched a couple of times, but nothing too alarmingly close, and not too many times. One guy actually did get clocked, and had to run off to the bathroom to deal with a bloody nose. When he came back, we saw he had a small scratch above his eye and the skin around it was swollen. Chances are it'll turn into a colorful shiner by tomorrow. He bounced right back, though, and continued on with the exercises. While it was unpleasant, I'm sure, for him to get hit (his partner was a BIG guy), he didn't seem to bothered by the mark it left on his face. Since bruises are unavoidable in this line of work, it is rather nice to be around people who consider them to be a point of pride. "Oh, MAN, look at the one on my knee! Will you take a picture of this for me? I've got to put this on my blog!" Actual words from my roommate, and I will probably be saying the same exact thing to her tomorrow. Though I'm not planning on getting a black eye!

After walking to the grocery store with a few fellow classmates when we got back from class in the evening, we stopped at Baskin Robbins and got some ice cream. Me, being the child at heart that I occasionally admit to being, obviously got a clown cone, which is pictured above. The girl working there told me she'd never made one before, but I still think she did a pretty good job. Once we arrived back at the motel, I decided to spend the rest of my night in the apartment doing various things that didn't involve moving far at all. And on that note, I am falling asleep at my computer, even though it's not very late here. Long day today, and long day ahead- love it!!

Day 1: So you think you're in shape?

Guess again.

I, along with everyone else here, am horrendously sore.

We got up bright and early at 7:15 this morning, which wasn't hard since it was 10:15 on the east coast, and had breakfast before heading out at 8:30 to the University of Washington. What did we do, once we got there?

We fell. And we rolled. A lot.

Hours and hours of falling forward, backward, and sideways. Of rolling forward and backward, of diving onto the ground and keeping the momentum with a forward roll. As difficult as it was on our unconditioned bodies, it was so much fun. Although, I did learn today that backward rolls might not be my thing. Might. But I'll work on that more.

All of the falls were in the morning, we had an hour lunch break, and came back to roll around on the ground, writhing around as if we were in serious pain. We got to finish up the day working on the "picture punch" in the last hour. This is essentially the mother of all punches, and is the foundation for many other hits we will learn and use in the business. I did well on that one, I suppose; we were told they'd tell us if we're doing something wrong, and if they don't talk to us about it, we're doing it right. After Jason, our instructor, initially corrected my form, I received no other comments from the other instructors walking around. I guess I'll find out tomorrow, when we use this hit more and learn how to react to it.

Right after getting back to the hotel we made a run to Sports Authority down the road. Some people needed to get knee and elbow pads, I needed a new backpack. I made a mistake when I was packing to use as a carry-on/day bag my brother's old backpack from the early 90's that we probably should have gotten rid of in the mid 90's. Sadly, I did not realize that, since it had been living in our attic a while, the lining (something plastic-like) had melted into a glue-like substance that fused to a few of my belongings. Luckily, these things were and are able to be cleaned, though it's quite obnoxious to travel across the country and realize you need to de-gunk your computer charger. Not fun. Anyway, I got a new JanSport backpack (and on sale!) that will serve me quite nicely the rest of my days here. It will probably be my rock climbing bag when I get back, too. All in all, it was a physically tough but successful day.

Welcome to Washington!

Finally here! Spent most of my day on the plane/sleeping, and arrived in Seattle around 12:15 in the afternoon (3:15 PM, Virginia time). Met David Boushey at the airport, who runs the school, as well as three other instructors and nine other students. Evidently, David and I know all the same people (my director from Blue Jacket, Mark "Rat" Guinn, being the predominant mutual contact). Then we passed through the city on our way out to the hotel we're staying at in Lynwood. This city is beautiful; it was neat to see the Space Needle, port, and mountains all in the same view. The only downside is the fact that it is currently quite chilly, but it's not too bad. Much better than the blazing heat and sticky humidity I left behind in Virginia.

I tried to meet everyone today, but as there are 60 of us total, I highly doubt I will remember most peoples' names by tomorrow. There are 15 girls, and the rest are guys. Several people are from outside the country, too: Chile, Austria, Barbados, England, Israel, Japan, and a couple of guys from Australia. Everyone seems to have different backgrounds; some have done martial arts in the past, some are actors who want more out of their career, others are simply looking for an exhilarating life experience. We had an orientation meeting regarding everything from our lunch breaks to the professionalism expected of everyone, then ate pizza and mingled some more before calling it a night. Personally, I have been up and about for 21 hours or so, and I'm dead tired. We start tomorrow- unarmed combat!