Sunday, January 13, 2008

Break-neck speed

Austrian Update: Yesterday In the evening Heng Xin took the three of us to go see the Shaolin tour performing in Vienna. As many of you may know Xin is a CR-azy driver, which was super fun (see Richu's blog for more), but having my head whipped back into my headrest repeatedly did nothing to help a neck injury I sustained in training and I woke up this morning with a vary sore/stiff neck.

Here in Vienna they have jumping class on saturdays right after training, then advanced tumbling at 5. We stayed for the first one, which was mostly basic rolls, then some head flips and liyu dating. Doesn't sound too hard right? Alas, for me it was.

One of the jumps is a diving roll. Some of the folks here jump super high, perpendicular to the floor, head down, then go into the roll. I definitely found this a little intimidating, my constant fear in things like that is breaking my neck. But I figured I used to swim, I used to play volleyball, I understand the mechanics of diving and rolling. Unfortunately, either I'm even more uncoordinated than I think or my arms were just too tired from training to adequately support a diving roll, but they totally gave out and I landed, hard, on my head/neck/shoulder. Yi and Richu were both watching and apparently it looked pretty bad. I shook it off ok but I was definitely leery of my jumping for the rest of the class, and my head flips were just somersaults.

I was talking about it afterwards, and I realized that my fear of getting injured is probably part of why I got injured, as it causes me to hesitate in my movement. But I don't know if having it happen has made my fear worse or helped me get over it because now I know I won't actually die.... Either way, I'm giving my neck a break today so it doesn't get actually broken.

2 comments:

  1. Hope you were able to give your neck some rest today! It does sound pretty daunting if you haven't done much of it. Both Richu and De have been in L2 much longer than you so they are more used to it. Plus, Richu was taking Gymnastics. So take Qbertplaya's advice about baby steps and face your fears one step at a time!

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