Beat sticks

So I lost the nail of my right index finger. Not that this is terribly surprising. It got whallopped quite soundly by about ten pounds of metal. Fortunately, the X-rays showed no damage to the phalanges, so I'm all good. Broken fingers are no fun, and it really would've sucked to break one of 'em.

That's one of our riskier two-person fighting forms that we do. Spear vs. halberd is a challenge at the best of times, and there's a little less of a margin of error on that one. But I have it on reasonable authority that it looks pretty darn good.

We also do a less nerve-wracking fighting form where the worst-case scenario is a bad bruise. My buddy picks up a 6-foot long staff, I pick up a pair of 2-ish foot long clubs, and we try to beat each other to death with them.

Now let's take a minute to talk about these forms. Yes, they're choreographed and planned out (we do do free sparring with weapons, but that's neither here nor there), but that doesn't mean that it's not real. You screw up in these forms and you get clobbered. Yeah, you know what's coming, but we're not pulling our strikes, and I have the bruises to prove it. I came close to being knocked unconscious by my partner when I was a little slow on a block. My fault, really. And the bottom line is that if you can't accept the reality that you're going to pick up a few bruises doing this kind of activity, you probably shouldn't be doing it.

The form in question is a little more anxiety-causing than some others, at least for me, for one simple reason. Those clubs are short. If you want to strike at someone holding a long staff, you have to be well inside their strike range to be in any way effective. If you're not careful, a guy with a staff can knock your head off of your shoulders before you're able to close in enough to get on the offensive. So it's in your best interest to know where both ends of that staff are at any instant in time, and not be where they are.

Suffice it to say, you learn to read someone's body posture really fast. You learn to move quickly and keep light on your feet to avoid getting clocked. Trust me, even the light end of the staff to the head is no fun.

Now, while these forms are the ones which are most likely to cause injury, they're also the ones that you learn fastest. Getting clubbed in the ribs is often a strong motivator to not make that mistake next time.

Some things you have to be nuts to even try

Okay, so there are people out there who have very well-established comfort zones. Some have them so well-established that any attempt to step outside that comfort zone freaks them out, whether it's them stepping out of it, or someone else. Some people, for example, say that I'm completely nuts to go camping in the backcountry every so often when I have a perfectly nice house right here. It's not exactly an untenable position. Granted, they may be missing the point of going into the backcountry in the first place, but their point is nevertheless a valid one.

My comfort zone tends to be a little bit on the wider side. I like being in the middle of nowhere for days on end. I routinely face off with a guy who's bigger and stronger than me and end up getting pretty badly bruised for it.

So me and one of my long-time martial arts partners have taken it upon ourselves to learn a form which involves duking it out with shiny, pointy weapons, and trying not to kill each other in the process. I arm myself with a Chinese eagle spear, he arms himself with a nine-ringed halberd, and we promptly attempt to kill each other with them.

Okay, it's not as crazy as it sounds.

The halberd is made out of steel and is methodically hacked at my feet, my head, and my chest throughout the form. In return, I jab my spear, methodically, at his head, chest and feet. Each time, we duck, dodge, or move out of the way of the offending weapon before it has a chance to skewer or clobber us.

Again, let me emphasize my previous "not as crazy as it sounds" dictum.

It should be mentioned that the spear is blunted (it looks sharp, but it really isn't), and the halberd is unsharpened (pointy and heavy, but not sharp); but even these can do a lot of damage if they hit you hard enough. The halberd (the heavy metal end of which is repeatedly swung at my head) weighs in at about 10 lbs, give or take a little.

For those of you who haven't figured it out yet, that's enough to leave a substantial bruise, or crush a finger quite nicely if it should happen to hit one.

I think you can see where this is going.

Making a long story short (which is actually kinda a necessity, since I'm trying to type this without use of my right index finger), my right index finger is now in a splint. They haven't x-rayed it, but at the very least, it needs to be immobilized until the swelling goes down.

The fact that a blunt weapon managed to draw a not insubstantial amount of blood should probably tell you something.

So, we'll see how long this takes to heal. Fortunately, I'm still able to do the lion dances over Chinese new year, but I don't know how functional my right hand is going to be for martial arts demonstrations.

Stay tuned.

Sometimes I wonder if your average turnip could outsmart me.

I'm not dumb. At least I don't think I am. I'd like to think I have at least average intellect. I'm not saying I'm a genius either, because let's face it, I'm not.

What I do have is a complete lack of anything that could even remotely be described as common sense.

My Kung Fu school is giving a huge Bak Mei demonstration on Friday in Medicine Hat. Being the enthusiastic martial artist that I happen to be, I decided that I'd do a few demonstrations. Four of them, in fact. Two empty hand fist forms, a staff form, and a two-man fighting staff demo. This doesn't sound like much, but the two fist forms are the longest in the style (and at full-force, they're somewhat exhausting); I hate staff forms with a passion; and the two-man fighting staff demo involves having a huge guy named Tom try to beat me to death with a stick. And that one's going to be performed last, so I'm gonna be exhaused, and Tom's still gonna be trying to beat me to death with a stick.

And all that doesn't include the Lion dance I'm doing before the Kung Fu demo.

No, I take it back, I am dumb.

Note to self: obtain defibrilator before demo on Friday....

Smooth, Drew, real smooth.

On the subject of Gravity, let's deal with something I learned the hard way today.

Gravity+absentmindedness+flight of stairs=ouch.

I took a bit of a tumble down the stairs today. Long flight of stairs too, the height difference between the first and ground floors is about 25-30 feet on that particular stairwell (the U of C med school was basically made of three buildings patched together, and sometimes they don't quite fit perfectly, so in some places, the stairwells have more stairs than others), but fortunately, I only had to drop half that distance.

'Course, it probably would have been a little easier if I had just dropped, instead of having to roll my way down the stairs, slamming rather undignified into the brick wall on the opposite end of the first landing.

So, just so you know, the next time you watch a movie where one of stuntmen has to roll down a flight of stairs; that hurts.

Would've been nice if they had carpeted stairwells, but nooooo, they had to have these hard linoleum tiles. 'Course, you can't have carpeting in a hospital. That's bad. But still....

Did I mention ouch?

Huge Guys with Hard Elbows

I hurt.

I just ate, both literally and figuratively, an elbow.

This would not be much of an issue if the other end of said elbow were not connected to a man who weighs approximately 320 lbs. And no, I'm not exaggerating. If anything, I'm actually underestimating the guy's weight. He's fricking huge.

There's a difference between sparring and flailing. Sparring is an exercise. The purpose of the exercise is to learn improvisation; to react to your opponent and respond. The object is not to hurt your opponent. Sometimes accidents happen, someone gets smacked in the face or whatever; but for the most part, it's bloodless. Flailing is a very different exercise. You swing wildly not giving a flying, um, darn what you hit, if you hit, or how hard you hit. This guy was deeply in the latter category. We're also very careful in how we use elbows; largly because they can be absolutely devastating weapons. Hit someone with an elbow and you can do everything from winding them slightly, to breaking an arm, to cracking some ribs to breaking a nose or a neck. And it's a very difficult weapon to moderate. There is very little difference between the force required to snap someone's head upwards, and the force necessary to break their neck. So, no elbows, as a general rule; until you get really good.

My opponent in this particular case was not that good; he just thinks he is. It's a damn good thing my reflexes are good. I jerked my head back about six inches just before he hit. If I hadn't; I probably would be in the market for some replacement teeth. As it was, he probably hit me hard enough to break my nose, but since he didn't actually hit my nose, that was a non-issue. He hit my two front teeth pretty hard, not hard enough to knock 'em out, but hard enough to make 'em hurt a bit. My lower lip got cut up pretty badly. I think I bit down on it.

As it is, yeah, I hurt. My jaw feels like someone took a sledgehammer to it, my lower lip has started swelling. I don't remember it, but apparently as soon as I got hit, I dropped like a stone. My Daai Si Ying thought that I'd suffered an anneurism or something. I don't think I blacked out or anything, I think my head just got a little knocked around. Tom, our resident med tech agreed with that assessment. My pupils were a bit dilated and I was having a little trouble tracking his finger when he moved it around. That improved after about 20 minutes, a little water, and sitting out for a bit.

At any rate, Daai Si Ying was decidedly unimpressed at the other guy and decided to teach him control.

I'm not a violent guy by nature, but I have to admit that watching my former opponent get the crap pummeled out of him was immensely satisfying.