When I woke up this morning, I honesty didn't think, "Hey, I think I'd like to throw myself on a mat-- that sounds fun!" And yet, I learned how to "fall correctly" by throwing myself on a mat in a middle school gym tonight! I also learned-- well, I attempted-- to drop and roll in one smooth movement. Normally, I try to avoid falling, in fact, I've spent my life being afraid of falling, which is probably why I've gotten pretty hurt by falling... but those are others stories for another day ...
Nevertheless, I learned that when you fall forward, you want to catch your body on your forearms and you want to yell to expel the air that's inside of you to avoid crushing ribs. I learned when you fall sideways, do a roll, because you want to get all the momentum on your arm and shoulder so you don't stain (or break) your neck or spine.
"Where did you learn this?" I bet you're wondering.. the answer, my dear friend, is in the community Tae Kwan Do class I'm taking now. When I got the school district's community class schedule, Tae Kwon Do sort of jumped out at me, so I signed up, paid $40 and now twice a week for just over an hour, I learn how to block, kick, punch, and fall and oh, yeah, learn to count to 10 in Korean!
The class is about half kids and half adults. Some people are total beginners like me, some are a little more advanced, but we all run around in bare feet and practice all these little skills together. The teacher is a black belt of some rank and is from Thailand and adds "s" to most of his words and cracks himself up as he tries to make every skill as complicated as possible.
What I like about this, is I'm totally new and yet I don't feel like I have to be perfect and it's fun just to play and try and get a little better each time!
If I want, I can even get the white martial arts uniform... good times :)
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