Unintentional contact with another person

I am still snickering about this weekend. On Saturday, I participated in another tournament. For once we had someone new in our division, which was fantastic. There were four people in my division. I thoroughly lucked out and managed to snag one of the visiting senior instructors as my coach. What a difference have a good coach makes! I fought first, against another woman from my school, and thoroughly trounced her (by a good 20 points). About 15 seconds from the end of the match, I happened to look up and see how far in the lead I was. I almost got my head knocked off because I just stood there, shocked. Me! in the lead?!

Then waited for the next match to complete. In the process, suffered an athsma attack. Fortunately I had my inhailer with me, so I was able to compete against the winner of the second match, which happened to be the new girl. She had just trounced the woman who usually trounces me at every other tournaments.

The match was going well, considering that I could barely breath. My opponent, yet another tall woman (what do they fed them at that school!), clobbered me profusely. I was too tired to move out of the way, so I ended up just absorbing/blocking most of her kicks to block/counter. I managed to stay inside on a number of her techniques. But I remember thinking...

"Gasp...stupid long legged wench...gasp...back off!...gasp...ooof!...get that bleeping...gasp...leg...gasp...out of my way!

My coach was awesome, yelling out combinations when I couldn't think, and pushing me further than I thought I could go without being able to breath. You can go four minutes without oxygen right? I think I just proved it.

Well, part way though the match, I'm not sure exactly what happend, if I blocked her kick with a punch or what, but I ended up with a very jammed wrist. I think the medic was psycic or something, because he shows up with his duffel to watch my match not 20 seconds before I get hurt.

I took my minute to ensure that my wrist was reasonably ok, and continued fighting, but from then on, I couldn't block as well, and she pulled ahead and won. Four seconds from the end of the match, I knew it was all over, and pretty much just ended it there, but she squeeked in that last kick, that I didn't even have the energy to block.

After the tournament, we all went out for dinner, and my instructor happened to catch me hissing when I went to pick up my soda. He ordered me off to the hospital to get it checked out. Fortunately not broken, but nicely sprained.

Of course, the fun part came when trying to explain how it happened, at which point the triage nurse had to find an appropriate listing in their computer... The closest they could find

"Unintentional contact with another person"

I guess that works.. I didn't "intend" for my fist to contact her shin like that!

Laura

'Unintentional contact'...thankfully...not a lot of that happens with us. Although, on occasion, it does...and provides for some awkward moments. LOL!

Good job getting out there and getting it done no matter if you win or lose. Very interesting story...thanks for sharing !

Larua, I thought blocking a kick was definitely intentional contact with another person.

So you would think. I guess the reasoning was that I didn't intend to block her kick with a punch...

The sad part is, I had to take my mom up to the hospital because she was experiencing some numbness because she was having an allergic reaction to an antibiotic that she's on, and they started asking her all sorts of questions about "Is everything ok at home?" etc!

Laura

Sabumnim Laura,

Have you thought about using some tiger balm for the injury? Obviously, rest, heat/cold will be useful, but a good tiger rub down can do wonders for pain.

You can get a bottle from Karate Depot or a local chinese store sells them. Have a friend put a dab on your injury and in the middle of their hands, have them slap their their hands together and rub to create heat (a la Miyagi; it works!). Then they put their hands on the injured area and massage it in (not to rough).

Good luck.

Osu.

Laura,
tiger balm sounds good for the sprain, but something you say about "unintentional contact" is a bit off base.

In tournament, most rules preclude you from hitting someone maliciously... but blocking is a "defensive hit"... and you should be blocking so hard that no one wants to offer up a kick or punch to be blocked. "Back in the day", we were taught exactly what you're opining about here... punch a kick, kick a punch... that was the blocking theory... if we didn't leave a bruise, it wasn't properly blocked.

It's good to have a good coach with you, but you need to have the right mindset when you go into a tournament... the attitude that "these people really don't want to fight with me"... and keep that mindset... "because they don't want what I've got for them".

Fight to win, not to place... and don't think that just because somebody beat you once or twice that "they can beat me"...

For tournament competition, grow a mean streak... and don't let up on it...

The sprain will heal, and if you think about what happened in this competition, you'll have an edge on the next one... think of it as "untentionally light" contact...

Dit ta jow is your friend for sprains and bruising.... you can get it from the herbalist in Chinatown. Tiger balm is more for muscular soreness.

Perhaps the hospital should have a new category - "Martial Arts/Sporting related injury".

certainly the adventure of taking a train into a chinatown perhaps getting lost then eventually finding a place of unknown quality and paying over $5 USD per ounce...all of that is much more fun than pulling up to any convienence store and picking up some bengay for one third the price of an exoticly named bottle of magic that has the same active ingredients.

...except with a bengay or off the shelf eqivalent, it has the added benefit of being designed to not come off as easy with sweating.

but yeah, it's much more of an adventure going to a herbalist in Chinatown than a main street CVS.

Whatever Ed... different jows are made from different recipes... as is surprise, surprise... Bengay... (or Bengué if you're French).

The active ingredient in Bengay is methyl salicylate - an analgesic derived from oil of wintergreen - which is now synthetically produced. Methyl salicylate is highly toxic and can be lethal if overused. Bengay contains between 10-30% methyl salicylate, depending on "strength". In most jows, oil of wintergreen is less than 1.8% by dry weight/vol.

Herbal apothecary formulations are designed to work "in harmony" with all other ingredients - unlike modern "drugs", which assume that symptomatic relief is somehow the result of an "active" (magical?!) ingredient.

Perhaps it should be noted, for the ignorant and the uninformed, that a lot of "modern" medicines are derived from studies of traditional herbal remedies.

Of course, if you rather pay the big multinational drug companies big money for overpriced synthetic versions of natural remedies that have been around for thousands of years... be my guest.

that was my point. it cost $20usd for a 4oz bottle with Chinese letters and a dragon on it, and one third that cost for a 4oz tube that actually lists it's ingredients in English. I bet if I switched the contents of the two, you'd still say the one with the dragon works better...so I have no need to start an argument with you.


by the way, pharmacedical comes from a greek word meaning 'magic substance'.

Quote:

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Of course, if you rather pay the big multinational drug companies big money for overpriced synthetic versions of natural remedies that have been around for thousands of years

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herbal medicine isn't a big multinational drug industry? The figures in the US alone are in the billions anually, since the 'new age' campaign duping people into thinking things are natural just because they have a tree instead of a company logo on the bottle.

it's quite provable that active ingredients in 'natural' herbal medicine are much more expensive than common products with the same or equivalent active ingredients. so why suggest going to Chinatown to buy a 3x more expensive product for the same stuff?


some light reading:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/science/article3418051.ece