This is getting old

Perhaps just because we are entering tournament season, or perhaps because the Talented Trio hadn’t been in class for nearly 2 months, (they do have their own dojo where they teach, but they have been away from Sensei’s watchful perfectionist eye,) Sensei has become very enthusiastic about exhausting drills this week, as if he had been saving it up for their return. The rest of us just get to “profit” by virtue of being in the same class at the same time.

To be honest, it wasn’t bad on Tuesday, because I don’t mind basics drills, especially when the basics being drilled are really short segments of kata that I need to work on anyway. But last night was sparring night. I have been trying, really I have, to at least overcome demonstrating my extreme dislike of sparring and just do it, since it is part of class and so on. I think I was even at least partially succeeding last night. Unfortunately one of the drills he came up with involved a throw. Again, not so bad when we were just working with partners. But then we got in a line and each had to serve, one after another, as the person to get thrown by whoever was facing the head of the line. I made it through probably 15 throws before I finally hit the floor weird and landed on the wrong shoulder. The bad shoulder. Which of course immediately reacted to its contact with the floor at that angle by popping out of joint and then back in again. Grrrr.

Fortunately, it didn’t get stuck out of joint for any time at all, so I only have to suffer minor soreness for a day or so. But every time something like this happens, I get irritated all over again at my shoulder, because it reminds me once again that I will never be able to use that arm fully and there really will be things that I can’t do, even though, most of the time, it seems like there’s no reason I can’t. (Archery! Why did it have to eliminate archery? It was the one projectile martial art I had been looking forward to learning, ever. I suppose there’s still always atlatl.)