Preparing for practice

Tonight is my second Aikido class. My body has recovered pretty well from Monday’s class. I’m still a bit sore, but its more from my new stretching regimen than anything. After being a skateboarder for 32 years, I have rock hard legs. Unfortunately, they aren’t very flexible. Even during highschool, when I wrestled for 3 years, they didn’t get all that limber. But…I can feel them getting better, and my hips too.

I’ve mentally reviewed the techniques we did Monday, and physically “stepped through” them a few times, trying to remember some of the more subtle points, and trying to do them correctly in my head — get rid of a couple of incorrect motions I was doing. I’ve found in both skateboarding and wrestling that such visualization can be helpful.

So far we haven’t done a lot of tumbling. The aikidoists are really good at doing various smooooooooth shoulder rolls. I feel like I will not be very smooth at first. On the other hand, I can fall really hard on concrete, get up, and keep skating — so I should be OK.

I have so much to learn. I wish I’d been able to stick with this 16 years ago, but things were so different then. Oh well, I’m here now, and that’s what counts.

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