Kickboxing!

As you may know, I did taekwondo at Brown this past year and loved it. Taekwondo is a Korean martial art that’s been around for two thousand years or so. It’s got formal elements, like board-breaks and poomsae, those martial arts dance routines that you may have seen before. My favourite part, though, is sparring. Taekwondo fights are an Olympic event now, and I love’em. I’ve found that sparring does great things for my psyche. You have to be one hundred percent focused on what you’re doing, and it’s real and engaging in a way that a lot of university isn’t. It’s a good element in my life.

Anyway, after a week or two here, I started to miss the excitement and energy of martial arts, and I needed an outlet for the frustrations of being told what to do all the time. It’s easy to feel like I’m losing my agency here, and I miss autonomy. Noel, one of the younger program staff, told me about his kickboxing class. We started no contact sparring in the hallways, and he eventually suggested that I go with him. I’ve been to four classes now. We had a funny experience in the first class. We were goofing off and throwing punches at each other, without touching though. Til he grabbed my wrist and twisted it. You know when someone twists your wrist and you have to twist your whole body to take the pressure off? So I turned around and threw an elbow strike at his face. But I accidentally connected and gave him a bloody nose! It was accidental, and I felt bad, but he’s boxed and is used to it. He told the entire program, and I’m now the student who hit a member of staff in the face, which makes a good story I think.

Anyway, taekwondo to kickboxing has been a big adjustment, and I largely have no idea what I’m doing. Taekwondo is all about kicks, you score a point by landing a kick on your opponent’s body protector, and more points if you get their head. There are jumping kicks and spinning kicks, front and back and side kicks. Some are simple, many are elaborate. It’s quite balletic, and a well-executed kick is a beautiful thing, a masterpiece of balance and efficiency. Kickboxing, on the other hand, is far less elaborate. I’d say taekwondo is to kickboxing what formal Arabic is to spoken. Taekwondo is elegant and controlled, while kickboxing is practical and forceful.

Consider the roundhouse kick, very powerful and fundamental to sparring successfully. In taekwondo, you pick up your foot and pivot your hips over, whipping it around like a tennis racket before putting it down in front of you. It took me a while, but I feel like I know how to do it now. So I was surprised and frustrated when the coach told me “your kick is strong, but your technique is all wrong!” The kickboxing roundhouse is more like whacking someone with a baseball bat. It’s less controlled. You keep your leg straight, swinging it up and putting it down behind you after the kick. You have to rely on momentum rather than control, it’s weird. All of the kicks in kickboxing are like that. You don’t take a step forward with a kick, because you’ll get punched in the face if you do. So a back leg axe kick has to come all the way back. Co-ordinating kicks and punches is also difficult, and requires a different way of managing your weight.

Learning the whole boxing part is hard too. Jabs, hooks, crosses, uppercuts etc. I got these nasty scabby cuts on the tops of my feet where the skin broke from beating up the punching bags, so I haven’t been able to kick a person because they bleed everywhere. They look exactly like stigmata, I’m Jesus. So I’ve just been focusing on punching, which is good for me I think.

Switching martial arts is confusing, not unlike learning spoken Arabic from formal. But after four classes, I think I’m getting the logic of it now, which feels amazing. I also got some boxing gloves, which makes me feel kind of badass, to be honest. Last class, the trainer finally let me box, and I think I did alright. I hit her more times than she did me, although it’s hard to tell who would win when you’re doing light contact, because it doesn’t hurt when you get hit. You can light contact spar with someone much bigger than you, and feel like you’re doing well, but in a real fight they would stun you if they landed a real punch. Fortunately, the elements of sparring are the same everywhere: distance, timing and angles. I’m also glad to be learning a more practical martial art, in case I do actually ever need to hurt someone. Be afraid, harrassful Jordanian males.

The class is also a rare opportunity to speak Arabic in the real world, rather than in a controlled speaking partner session. The whole class is in Arabic, and Coach Ali does not speak any English at all. Fortunately the names of the kicks and punches are the same as in English. I learned how to explain “I can’t do any kicks because I’ve hurt my feet and I’ll bleed anywhere,” I learned how to say “Is this OK?” and “Do it again?” and “I’m sorry! It was an accident!” Last class, I wore my Avi Schaefer Fund t-shirt, which has “seek peace and pursue it” in Arabic, Hebrew and English on the back. Hebrew script is not a great idea in the Arab world, but I had no shirts left. It got some attention, and I explained the fund and Avi’s story in Arabic, leaving out the Israeli army bit. I really needed to explain something, and I was able to, which felt excellent. It was a good example of language encouraging mutual understanding, I think. We also generally get rides back from the guys in the class, and we speak Arabic the whole time. I’m encouraged by how much I can understand when Noel and the lift-giver are rattling away at a hundred miles an hour.

I know that was quite a technical post with a lot of specific metaphors, but Arabic and martial arts actually hold quite similar places in my life. For years, I wanted to learn Arabic and martial arts, but they weren’t as easily available as Spanish or the gym and I never took the initiative until my second year at Brown. People are generally surprised when they hear what I do. In both areas, the more you know the less you know, and you can tear yourself apart if you expect perfection, or even competence, right away.

Here’s to kicking linguistic and physical ass for the second half of the CLS!