Thursday, July 26, 2007

You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)

Made it to class tonight after an entire week of not training. Mercifully, Xu taught so I didn't have to endure any special coaxing from Shifu. Felt the effects of the humidity again which made training a little woozy. At one point during forms practice, I went to the changing room to retrieve my hand towel so I could mop myself in between turns on the carpet. Heng Jian recommended I not do so because he believes that removing the sweat results in your body perspiring even more, and causes you to get dehydrated even faster. Whatcha think?

A week off from training might have done me some good, at least in terms of practicing the all mighty sweep kick. I guess because my head wasn't entirely in it tonight, I just slashed through forms and when I got to the gongbu right before the sweep, I dropped down and just went for it. And to my delight, I managed to make it around a number of times. The no-think method of approaching the hump served me well tonight. I ran out of gas a little by the end of class, but I avoided rebruising the inside of my right knee that kept slamming into the carpet last week. Yay!

After class, we headed to Thai Son with a good number of the crew -- almost had a dirty dozen, including some faces who hadn't joined us before -- Ryan, Brian and Raul. On our walk over, Niederwelt, Billy and I entertained ourselves (and made children cry and dogs bark) with our renditions of classic '80s tunes by bands like The Cars and Journey! So in honor of that, and my good sweep night, I'm doing a long distance dedication to all of you dorks with a video by one of the best one-hit wonders to come out of that lush decade. Here's Dead Or Alive singing "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)." Yeah, baby!


8 comments:

  1. So sad I missed it! It didn't occur to me until I got home that I could have still made Thaison after work. I'm going to make it this weekend no matter what! It'll be a sweep fest.

    Re: sweating. The scinece behind sweat (and correct me anyone if I am remembering this wrong) is that as it evaporates it removes heat from your body. So I don't know if wiping it off accellerates this process (makes sense since you feel cooler) but I don't know that it would make you sweat more than you alrteady would have. Maybe you just notice it more because you're dry again for a sec...

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  2. i love this song! great class! yeah i imagine if the sweat has already come off the body then wiping it should not be bad. not science, just practical thoughts. the royal "we" will miss you guys the next week or so!

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  3. I think there is a balance between perspiring and sweating. Sweating in the body’s natural process used to cool down. Unfortunately in the temple there is usually no breeze to help the water more quickly evaporate. I think the more you sweat the better. The more you sweat the more toxins you are going to release from your body. I have never heard that wiping down actually accelerates perspiration.

    In my case I don't use the towel as a means of cooling down, but to: 1- keep the sweat out of my eyes 2- keep the sweat out of my brothers’ eyes and off the floor (kind of a courtesy thing).

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  4. Those poor children and dogs :D

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  5. Did big hair exist in Thailand during the '80s?

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  6. Big hair invaded every corner of the globe in the eighties. I'm sure there were Aboriginal goatherders in New Zealand sporting teased out purple hair... I was like 6 and my friends still had crazy crimped dos...

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  7. i'm glad i just caught the end of that decade...good hip hop music in there too though. But no qualms about missing the fashion. Not that i even follow current fashion trends. But yea that guy was kind of scary.

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