Whoa, Nelly!

Monday afternoon I decided to take a few days off from my OCD training schedule and get a little work done on my so-called "real" life. Sensing this hubris, the Shaolin gods smote me with a thrown back. So whether I had wanted to or not, I didn't return to training until Thursday night.

It felt great to be back, I was full of pent up energy, and ready to go hardcore. About halfway through warming up with kip-ups though, my back pain reasserted itself and I knew that unless I wanted to really lay myself out, I'd have to work at containing the exuberance I felt.

This was quite a challenge; lots of my favorite Kung fu dorks were there including the long-absent Heng Gui! As we all know, he has through-the-roof chi so his return made class even more energized.

It was a strange feeling, instead of having to dig out the energy to go full-chi the whole class, I was getting constant reminders in my lower back to not extend quite so much, or explode quite that hard. I now understand a small part of your pain Qbertplaya, in having to pace yourself when your physicality can't match your chi. It's hard!

The fact that I had to do that though, was a good indicator that I CAN pop and extend and go strong all class. Finally, when trying (unsuccessfully) to do 5 kicks with slightly less vigor, I gave up on reining in the chi and went for it. I'm paying the price today, (training L2 is getting about 60/40 odds right now) but it was worth it to take advantage of such a fun class.