Drawing Breath

I have been pondering the changes I’ve experienced in the last few years of my Aikido training. I’ve reached the rank of 1st Kyu (brown belt), and should be taking my Dan grade (black belt) in September 2008. I am now considered to be a “high grade” student, with a good knowledge of a broad range of Aikido techniques. I clearly have a better understanding of Aikido than someone who has just started training. Yet I don’t really feel any closer to knowing Aikido than I did when I started training 13 years ago. The problem isn’t what I know; it’s that my understanding of what I don’t know has changed significantly, and will probably continue to change for as long as I can train.

For example, there are two fundamental movements in Aikido that form the foundation for every technique; these are circular movements are known as “tai sabaki”, and in our dojo are termed positive (irimi tenkan) and negative (tenkan). When I first started to train, my tai sabaki practice focused almost completely on the placement of my feet, and getting my balance right. As I grew more confident, my feet started to “take care of themselves”, and I became increasingly aware of the placement and movement of my arms. Now, as my arm movement becomes more instinctive, I am conscious of how my weight is distributed as I perform the movement. Gaining knowledge and experience has simply opened up a new areas for me to try and perfect.

The realisation that I will never fully perfect my chosen art is what makes it so compelling; even if I practice the same movements and techniques for the rest of my like, there will always be something new to find in each of them. It’s a daunting prospect in some ways, but it’s also what drives me to keep training, to keep learning, safe in the knowledge that there will always be something new for me to try next time I step onto the mat.

1. Even though I started training in 1993, I’ve had a series of problems affecting my knees, and subsequently my hips, which have meant that I was unable to train for a total of six years within that period. Each time I’ve returned to the dojo after an extended absence has meant that I have had to train for several months, and most recently almost two years, to get back to the standard I was at before being forced to stop. This is why, after almost nine years on the mat, I am still only a brown belt; the path to Dan grade typically takes around five to six years. ↑

Well done to everyone who passed their gradings with weekend at the Phoenix Aikido Club. The standard this time was very high; the 4th Kyu (orange belt) gradings in particular were very impressive. Not only did everyone perform the techniques to a high standard, there was also a really good, positive spirit that is really nice to see. Well done to John from Sensei Costigans Stratford dojo for a really superb grading - and to his Uke Paul, for taking about six Koshinage (hip throws) - and to my Mum’s husband John, who also performed extremely well (he even got an honourable mention from Sensei Moss).

There were only two disappointments; two of the guys going for 1st Kyu (brown belt) weren’t really ready. They’ll be fine next time though, and will still be eligible to take their Dan Grade in 2008.

So, those lovely people at the Inland Revenue have issued me with a nice big tax bill for the year ending 2006. Not only that, but they waited until the bill was overdue before sending me written notification of this nice big tax bill (I could have found out sooner if I had logged into their site every few days to check my statement). So now I have a nice big tax bill, and interest to pay because the payment is overdue.

Now I have to write to them to appeal against the interest charges, which is a time consuming pain in the ass, and something I wouldn’t have to do if the tax office had had the wherewithal to write to me in a timely fashion. Gits.

Grading weekend again at the Phoenix Aikido Club on March 11th. Good luck to everyone taking their next belt, especially my Mum’s husband John, who will be taking his 4th Kyu (Orange Belt) on Sunday.

It’s nice to be approaching a grading weekend safe in the knowledge that all I’ll be doing is watching. I won’t face another grading until I take my black belt in September 2008. On the other hand, being the ridiculous height I am (6′5″), I am resigned to the fact that no-one is going to ask me to uke for them. Most people (sensibly enough) choose someone who is a similar height, or a little shorter. So unless the club gets a sudden influx of professional basketball players, I’m stuck as a spectator.

It’s a shame, because it’s very flattering to be asked to uke for a grading. At least I’ve been fortunate enough to get called up to uke for Sensei Costigan a few times in the last few weeks, which is very satisfying, if a bit nerve-wracking.

Chris Beach has gathered together a great collection of atheist quotes, including some of my favourites from Douglas Adams and Carl Sagan. Well worth a look.

Via disobey.com.

Well, it’s been quite a while since my last post on this blog, or on my main portfolio site for that matter. A lot of things have changed, and it’s time to start writing about them again. I don’t expect that anyone reads what I post, or cares very much if they do. I have and will continue to use this site as a cathartic outlet; a chance to vent my spleen, or coalesce my thoughts. And no doubt it will continue to attract a ridiculous amount of comment spam that will, as usual, be flushed down the virtual toilet by the excellent Spam Karma.

I am already so fed up of seeing football everywhere; TV ads for everything from Argos to Pringles featuring footballers, managers or commentators; football related gewgaws and frippery given away with every soft drink or breakfast cereal; bloody cars with those bloody ridiculous bloody England flags flying from each bloody side of the bloody roof!

Bloody hell, the World Cup hasn’t even started yet. What a great summer it’s going to be for football tyros everywhere. I so glad I have a decent DVD collection.

On GMTV this morning, a big deal was made of a documentary to be aired tonight about a family of quadruped humans discovered in Turkey:

Researchers believe the five brothers and sisters, who can walk naturally only on all fours, may provide new information on how humans evolved from four-legged hominids to walk upright.

Two sisters and one son have only ever walked on two hands and two feet, while another daughter and son occasionally walk on two feet.

Much has been made of their discovery, and they are being described as a possible “missing link” between apes and humans. Am I missing something here? These poor people have a hip defect that makes it very hard for them to stand upright. Yet almost every ape or monkey I’ve ever seen on television is capable of standing upright. Most of them can even walk on their hind legs, albeit awkwardly.

This isn’t a discovery that could aid research into the evolution of humans. This is a freak show, pure and simple, with these poor sods paraded around on camera for our “entertainment”.

Well, I failed my brown belt grading yesterday in quite spectacular fashion. Frustratingly, it wasn’t my technique that let me down, it was my bloody ridiculous metabolism. It was a really long grading, and I had been sitting on the mat for almost 3 hours before my name was called. Unfortunately, this is just too long for me to go without food, and as soon as I stood up and felt the tremors in my thigh muscles, I knew it wasn’t going to go well.

I have always been borderline hypoglycaemic , and have to eat every 3 hours¹ or so to stop myself feeling sick and dizzy; by the time my grading started, I hadn’t eaten for nearly four and a half hours and my blood sugar level had tanked. As well as the physical effects, getting too hungry also makes me confused and irritable (just ask my wife), when I really needed to be alert and relaxed.

Consequently, I struggled mentally and physically, and when Sensei Moss called a halt to my grading with only half the required techniques completed, I knew I’d failed. No surprise, as I didn’t manage to complete a single kata without having to stop and regain my balance. Ironically, the part of the grading I was most worried about, the two man keiko, went really well; possibly this was because my head was so fuzzy by that stage that all I could do was move out of the way and use whatever technique dropped into place, rather than over thinking each move.

The most frustrating thing was that the panel assumed I simply wasn’t fit enough to manage the grading, which really isn’t the case; I just can’t go for that length of time without food. In retrospect, I should have prepared better, and asked Sensei for permission to leave the mat at some stage to “fuel up” before my own grading started, but I completely underestimated how long the other gradings would take. When I grade again in July, I shall take some carbohydrate laden food² with me, and have already discussed with Sensei the necessity of taking a break to eat.

My own failure aside, the other gradings were a mixed bag, with quite a few people failing, and a few doing really well (particularly those from the Milton Keynes and Stratord dojo’s, something that Sensei commented on too). Dennis, the only other person going for brown belt, did a spectacular job, and really deserved his pass, despite his having reservations about his level of preparation.

All in all, it was a disappointing experience for me, but I’m trying to be positive and treat it as a learning experience. I have to admit I wasn’t as prepared as I could have been, but after a 6 year gap I really needed to face the pressure of a grading again, and I’m fairly sure that if I had been okay physically I would have done enough to pass. Still, there is always next time, and the one positive thing I take from yesterday’s performance is that I don’t need to worry as much about the keiko, which is a big weight off my mind. I’ll be back on the mat tomorrow; I need to put the disappointment behind me, and get back to enjoying the training without the pressure of a grading for a few months.

1. Anyone who has spent enough time with me to see what happens when I go without food for too long will recognise at least two or three of the symptoms of hypoglycaemia listed below (I have experience almost all of them to a greater or lesser degree, but I’ve highlighted the ones that my wife will certainly recognise):

• Abnormal mentation, impaired judgement
• Nonspecific dysphoria, anxiety, moodiness, depression, crying, fear of dying
• Negativism, irritability, belligerence, combativeness, rage
• Personality change, emotional lability
• Fatigue, weakness, apathy, lethargy, daydreaming, sleep
• Confusion, amnesia, dizziness, delirium
• Staring, “glassy” look, blurred vision, double vision
• Automatic behavior, also known as automatism
• Difficulty speaking, slurred speech
• Ataxia, incoordination, sometimes mistaken for “drunkenness”
• Focal or general motor deficit, paralysis, hemiparesis
• Paresthesias, headache
• Stupor, coma, abnormal breathing
• Generalized or focal seizures

Although eating will reverse the symptoms very quickly (usually within minutes), I have found that eating high sugar snacks as a “quick fix” will almost certainly give me a severe headache, apparently as a result of the rapid swing in blood sugar levels; in the long run it’s always better for me to eat something high in carbohydrates (like pasta or wholemeal bread) than to reach for the chocolate bars or biscuits, even though it obviously takes longer to prepare a proper snack. ↩

2. At the moment, the plan is for honey and mashed banana on wholemeal bread, to give a good combination of quick and slow release sugars. If anyone has a better idea for a suitable snack (it has to be easy to carry and quick to eat), then please let me know. ↩

My favourite thing on TV at the moment is the “What Did You Want To Be?” advert for the new Ford Focus ST. It’s a hideous car, but I love the guy in the superhero costume. The way he takes to the air in response to a distressed scream is just superb. Watch it, then tell me it’s not the best superhero takeoff you’ve ever seen.

Update: The original site I linked to now requires paid membership to view the ad (yes, really), so watch it on YouTube instead. The quality isn’t as good, but it’s free.