"It's the wood that should fear your hand!"

We don't do much, or really anything, that involves contact in class. At least we don't in Level 1. So unless someone accidentally hits you in line, the person most likely to hurt you is, well, you. Now and again I've noticed I get shin splints from landing wrong in my jumps or bruise my feet from hitting them during caijiao/lunbi caijiao, but mostly these things go away after a bit of corrective modification. The last few classes my latest pain has come from stomping. I first notice a little pain in my right leg when I'm landing erqijiaos, straining my calf from landing too hard. Then immediately after, during the pubu chuanzhang, whilst stomping, the pain shoots up the back of my calf making it near-impossible to resist grimacing. This pretty much sets up a series of identical, and increasingly sharper pains during the stomps in forms, until I have to "air-stomp" and easy my way into gongbus to avoid doing myself a serious injury. Silly Hannah, what are you doing?

Richu made the comment that I should be hurting the floor, the floor shouldn't be hurting me. That made me think of "Kill Bill" where Uma is putting her fist through the fat hunk of wood. Now, I don't need to be punching through walls or beating people up, but the point remains, what good is any kind of strike if I'm just hurting myself? I'm not quite sure what I'm doing wrong, and I don't know why it's manifesting as a pain in my calf instead of a shin splint or something. Still, I will make a concerted effort to figure out the logic of hurting the floor since the last thing I want to do is limp through testing. Or really limp anywhere. If I have to, I will stomp right through to the cafe below us. More chi! Stomp harder!