Back to Class!

Last night, I finally made it back to the dojang for class.  I had been skipping lately, mostly due to the morning-all-day-all-night sickness.  When I have been in the past, it felt like working out on a stomach full of bad tacos -- everything would get all shook up and I would be on the verge of puking within about 20 minutes.  Good times.

But last night was different.  For one thing, since Wednesday night is Forms Night at my school, I was able to participate with the rest of the class instead of working out on my own.  I guess I forgot that the peer pressure of working out in a group is one of the reasons why I prefer martial arts to, say, an eliptical machine.  I give up when I'm on my own, but I'm too proud to quit when other people are doing it with me.

I felt pretty good during class.  Now that I am four months pregnant, I noticed that I got winded more quickly than usual, but I also recovered pretty quickly, so it didn't seem too bad.  Stretching felt good and was also harder than it used to be, but that may just be because I have been absent from class.  I know I am supposed to be doing yoga at home, but that hurts, so I have been avoiding it.

For part of the class, I took a new girl aside and showed her tae geuk Il Jang (yellow belt form).  She is transferring from another school where they learned some other kind of forms, so she has to learn the ones we do before she is allowed to promote.  The first three forms are all very similar to each other and I warned her that even those of us who have been doing them forever get them confused, so I told her to practice a lot over the holiday break.

At the end of the hour, our instructor asked the black belts to perform Koryo and Tae Bek.  Nothing like a double side kick to make a girl feel like a giant whale.  I remembered all the steps, but my moves are not as crisp as I want them to be.  Sigh.  Always something to work on.