Pain and paperbacks

[rachelmanija]

I'm still sore. Obviously I'm not training hard enough yet. But it's not like it _bothers_ me. Either I welcome that sort of pain as a sign that I'm learning and improving my strength and flexibility, or else my body knows that it's from physical improvements, not damage, and so the signals come in a way which doesn't discourage me from doing it again. At any rate, that type of hurting all over isn't unpleasant the way a paper cut or headache is.

A friend of mine who does not train sent me a chapter from her novel in progress in which the protagonist gets punched in the face. As I have now been punched in the face an embarrassing number of times (I should guard it better) and she never has, we got in a discussion about how it would really feel. I suggested that the sensation is more one of impact than of pain, plus the mental shock her heroine would feel because of the circumstances. I don't know if that's universal, though.

I noticed that after I started training, especially once I started free-sparring, I stopped primarily associating being hit with fear and pain, and started perceiving it more as if the initial feeling of impact was the most important one. (I'm talking about the kind of blows that would bruise at the most, of course, not cause real damage.) The immediate thought becomes, "He got me-- get my guard up better," or "He got me-- get him back," rather than, "Oh, my God, he _hit_ me, ow!"

I don't actually expect anyone to ever strike me in real life-- I have excellent avoidance skills, and I would also hope that I'd see it coming and get out of the way, block, or counter first-- but I think there's some value in learning what it feels like in a safe environment, so if it ever does happen you won't be paralyzed from shock and unable to respond appropriately.

Those of you who also train (or play sports or hit the gym often), do you feel the same way about the perception of such things? If you remember the "hit by a train" feeling from the first few months when you'd just started, was it different or did you perceive it differently from the way you feel when you go an extra mile now? Have your feelings about certain types of pain changed since you started?

Tweedkitten came over last night bearing soju, grapefruit juice, and an astounding selection of manga. I loaned her TRIGUN, UTENA, GRAVITATION 2, the novel BATTLE ROYALE, and ANGRY WHITE PAJAMAS. She loaned me more manga than I'm industrious enough to name, but I will no doubt be writing about here. But not yet. I'm now glued to the novel she also loaned me, THE DIM SUM OF ALL THINGS by Kim Wong Keltner, Tweedkitten's autobiography with the heroine's ethnicity and location changed to avoid lawsuits--- I mean, a very funny novel about a young Chinese American woman living with her grandmother and exasperated by the stream of obnoxious white guys with Asian fetishes who keep hitting on her, while rather guiltily flirting with a co-worker, a white guy and fellow secret carnivore on the staff of "Vegan Warrior."

Comments

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

In the martial arts I've studied, whenever I've been hit, I feel the impact first and the pain later, often much later. If I were punched in the face outside of a dojo, how much shock I'd feel would probably depend an awful lot on the circumstances: who hit me, why, where, and what led up to it. I still think I'd feel impact first and pain later.

[tweedkitten.livejournal.com]

This is a very interesting question. I have never really thought about how my perception or even the way I anticipate pain has changed. But, now that I'm thinking about it, it's really changed a lot since I first started training.

The way I see it, my perceptions of pain are separated into two categories: self-inflicted injuries and injuries from sparring. While one could easily cross into the other, for all intents and purposes I'll say that "self-inflicted injuries" represent sprains, strains, and other injuries that are not the result of a kick, punch, or block from another person. "Sparring injuries" are black eyes, broken noses, knocked-out/chipped teeth, etc.

Self-inflicted injuries: I've always had a minor fear of these. This came from the preexisting knowledge that I've always had weak knees then, later, weak ankles. My first sports related injury was a (very minor) softball injury to the knee, sliding into second. My injury to my left ankle is not sports-related (unless you count getting tossed into a mosh pit an extreme sport), but it spurred the degeneration of my already-waning trust in my joints.

Sparring: (Since I don't have too much experience free-sparring, I'll refer to one-step controlled sparring here [attack-block-counterpunch].) I feared sparring. I feared kicking people. I feared getting hit. Not so much anymore. I trust in my ability to (9 out of 10 times, at least) pull my punches when I'm supposed to. I'm not so scared of getting hit anymore, if at all. I do, however, still fear the counterpunch. I like my teeth and my nose. I don't want to lose them. Therefore, I am less afraid of sparring with my sempais and senseis. Most of the time, most higher-ranked students will control their punches and kicks. I've gotten walloped by white belts, however, because their counterpunches were too high/low. But I've also gotten winded after a kick by higher-ranked students who, for whatever reason, didn't pull their punches. And because they've usually got a little more energy behind their punches at their level, well.... Either way, the blows between the ranks becomes a trade-off of different types of pain. Lots of punches/not too much pain from the lower ranks, not too many punches but mucho pain if a punch lands from the higher ranks.

The verdict in both situations: Play sports and your ass is going to get kicked. The more you play, the higher your chances of encountering a situation where you are going to get your ass kicked. It's just the statistics speaking. However, I've found that the more experience I gain from training, the more I learn to anticipate and avoid a potentially dangerous situation (e.g., I am FOREVER taping up my ankles from now on). You're going to get hurt, but unless you're training in an art like senda or muay thai or krav maga you're probably not going to get clocked too severely. It'll heal, and it's just best to arm yourself with forethought instead of worry. The endurance I've gained (I remember that "hit by a freight train" feeling very, very well), the stamina, the flexibility, the strength, and whatever else I've gained from martial arts are well worth the minor injuries.

I still fear greige Hoarders of All Things Asian, however. I don't think there's any amount of training that's going to lessen my fear unless I use it to keep them away from me. >_<

I hope you enjoy the reading!

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

My two closest experiences to being punched in the face were: (1) getting kicked in the head by someone crowd-surfing at a concert; and (2) tripping and falling flat on my face on the sidewalk. The latter sounds trivial, but I couldn't get my hands out in front of me, and I hit so hard that I had black eyes the next day. I've suspected since that I might have broken or fractured my nose, but never bothered getting it checked out.

In both cases, the initial sensation was of impact and shock, and I didn't realize how much it hurt until later. I suspect the initial shock and probably the initial endorphin rush covers up some of the pain, in nearly all circumstances.

As a background note, I don't do sports, I'm extremely frightened of pain, and I have reason to believe that I'm fairly sensitive to it--in cases where I needed a local for some medical procedure or for tooth extraction, I could still feel not just sensation but actual pain after the regular dosage, and ended up needing more. (The first time I got a wisdom tooth extracted, the surgeon did not believe me when I told him I could still feel it, and didn't give me the extra dosage until he'd started pulling and I shrieked. This is why I waited six years to get the other wisdom teeth extracted, went to a different surgeon, and insisted on being knocked out first.)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I'm also extremely sensitive to dental pain. I need tons of local, it hurts excruciatingly being injected, and no matter how much they give me the procedure still always hurts. I had a crown put in six months ago, and it was an unbelievably horrible experience.

(By the way, M, yoga (and, I'm told, tai chi) offer many of the pleasures of martial arts but without all the hitting.)

But the sports-related pain doesn't much bother me, though I really hope I never get a tooth knocked out. I think part of the difference is psychological: you're in a chair, out of control, and you _know_ it's going to hurt and there's nothing you can do about it. With accidents and sports related things, you don't know it's coming, except maybe for that moment when time slows and you see it coming but can't avoid it, you do have control (trying to stop something and failing is very different from knowing you can't even try), and if you're moving around, you already have some adrenaline going.

Like Tweedkitten, I'm more afraid of self-inflicted injuries. Maybe it's because although the worst injury that ever happened at our school (in over thirty years of existence) involved someone getting punched in the face hard enough to break bones, almost all the serious ones I've seen or experienced have been self-inflicted.

As for getting smacked by white belts, I know what you mean. I haven't had a problem with black belts hitting me too hard, but brown belts are notorious for gaining a lot of power long before they gain control. I try not to smack people, especially if they're lower ranked than me, but I know I do sometimes.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

As for getting smacked by white belts, I know what you mean.

I am losing my patience with getting hurt by white belts. (Most aikido doesn't hurt unless you do it wrong. Unfortunately, it's easy to do it wrong.)

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

(Reading through your memories, rachelmanija, which is why I'm commenting on such an old entry.)

After two years of aikido, I'm more afraid for my joints now when I'm practicing with beginners than the rest of the time. Was practicing hiji kudaki (or nikkyo? in other schools) with two newbies this week; very thin, small young women, who nearly had their backs to me (which is inefficient), but I had to tap out very quickly because they went about it so hard, leaning on my elbow.

Canada Girl

[(Anonymous)]

When I first started to train in martial arts, I was surprised at what actually was painful (when getting hit, that is). Blocking hurts like a son of a...Getting punched wasn't so bad, and kicks, you just got the wind knocked out, and with little effort from the attacker's side. However, I was just surprised at what does hurt when one makes contact with another person.