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Old 04-23-2018, 02:26 PM   #5
jamesf
Dojo: Kitsap Aikido, Poulsbo, WA
Join Date: Oct 2015
Posts: 65
United_States
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Re: I learnt a valuable but unpleasant lesson

My story about "real world" ukemi:

So, we have weekday-evening practices where I train. It was Christmas week, and my sempai (plural) who usually open the dojo were out, so that duty fell to me. Now, between our northerly latitude and cloudy weather, it was already very dark 30 minutes prior to practice, when I got there. I should also point out, at this time, that I almost always wear sandals on my way to/from practice.

I get the key from the combination-protected keybox, open things up, then go to return the key to the box. As I'm stepping back outside, I forget about one oddly place concrete parking bumper and kick it hard while striding foreward on my left foot. This sets me off balance, and scrapes my big toe deeply. The rest of the parking bumper is in front of my right foot, which I have to awkwardly bound over, sending my right sandal flying. So now I'm in a position, leaning way forward over my right foot, with my momentum wanting to twist my right shoulder under to the front-left shikaku, all this over concrete paving. I really didn't want to try my luck with the concrete and another parking bumper that was possibly in the landing zone, so I manage to get in two hops and a did a sprawling breakfall (sort of like the ukemi for ikkyo ura) into the dirt/grass at the edge of the parking lot.

So, I only ended up with two "injuries": my scraped up toe and my pride. I cleaned up and wrapped up my toe (which didn't really hurt much until the adrenylin wore off on my drive home), and, after having given my dojo mates a good laugh, I was able to train (mostly) normally that evening.
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