Tonight we did more work in three groups, one for kata, sparring, and basics. The class went well, I’ve found that teaching sparring at different levels presents some interesting challenges. I’ve found that we have some exceptional yellow belts in Mapleton, both Lexi and Jesse are very skilled for their rank. The white belts had a good time learning the basics behind partner drills… I just had them punching from a safe distance and practicing their timing of blocks. We didn’t get too far into letting them actually block something before our 15 minute block was up.
The second class was sparring, sparring, sparring. We all had good go-arounds… I had the most trouble with Erbe and McCabe again tonight, as per my normal standard. On my second go-around with Sensei Hartman, something interesting happened. I sustained an injury that may well take the trophy for my strangest karate-related injury.
Sensei Hartman has been working to pressure me into finding an exit when we spar. Tonight, his tactic was to break my distance and then unleash a hailstorm of punches to force me to move. This tactic works VERY well. On about the fifth time down and back across the floor, his last punch hit me just below the left ear between the jaw and skull. He had his handpads on and it wasn’t a particularly hard punch, but immediately it was as if someone shut off the lefts on my Dolby 5.1 surround sound.
Yep. A few seconds later confirmed it, I definitely couldn’t hear out of that ear… it was like hearing through water. I tried clearing my ears by holding the other side, usually there is a catching sensation and the pressure equalizes. No such luck this time. I just get the sound of air going out, like someone blowing into a microphone.
Now, there was never any pain. I came home and took some Advil and slapped a cold compress on my neck in hopes that this reduces the inflammation and allows this ear to open up again. If I’m still having trouble with it on Friday or it starts hurting then I’m going to the doctor, but I think its just inflamed.
I still haven’t decided if this beats the time that Garls-san thumbed me in the eye and I had Marilyn Manson eyeball for three days, but its definitely up there on the weirdness scale.
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