The Vivanco Family Blog

It just hasn’t been my week.  Currently I am involved in martial arts, racquetball, coaching flag football and T-Ball.  So it all started on May 6th.  We had sparing that day.  Usually its not too bad since we wear pads on our shins, feet, head and hands – oh yeah and a cup, can’t forget the CUP!  Usually I fair pretty well in sparing.  I might be the oldest one in my class (most students are in their 20s with one or two 30 year olds scattered about) but I guess fighting enough growing up gave me some “experience”.  The worse you usually come away with is a few bruises on your legs and/or arms from blocks kicks. 

I am currently a green belt and I am sparing with a ~ 20 year old who is a yellow belt, lifts weights and is pretty good shape.  There isn’t supposed to be any punches to the head, although open hand slaps to the head are allowed just not at full force.  Then kicks are allowed since you have pads on your feet.   So we are going at it I’m getting the better of him.  Did I mention this was his 1st time sparing? Well he might be new to sparing but not to fighting as he has had his share of bar fights   Anyhow, at one point I get in too close and BAM he hits me square in the jaw with his ELBOW!  I have only actually gotten smacked once in the head while sparing so this was new to me AND NOT ALLOWED AT ALL!  I immediately take a knee.  This was a full on elbow shot full swing.  After taking enough time to recoup I get up and we continue.  A couple of minutes later, a kick to my cup!  I go down again.  His discipline and accuracy is way off. 

My sensei decided I needed to spar with someone else so off I go to another 20 something year old that is 6′ 5″ about 250lbs and a green belt like myself.  I am 5′ 9″ and 185lbs.  So we begin.  I have spared with him a number of times and hold my own.  This time he is throwing a lot of kicks pretty low.  I couldn’t figure out what he was doing because he hadn’t done that before and where he would have hit me wouldn’t really hurt that much if we were really fighting in the street.  To cut to the chase, he ultimately kicks me two times in the cup.  Full power round kicks dead on.  Cup or not, these hurt like crazy.  After an elbow to the jaw and three kicks to the cup I am sent to spar with the bag.  I haven’t gotten kicked in the cup sparing until that point but it must have been a magnet this time. 

I get home and my jaw is pretty sore.  No buises, just sore.  I make a slice bread sandwich and go to take my 1st bite.  WOW WHAT PAIN!  I practically had to let it soak in my mouth just so I could eat it.  The next day it hurts less but is still sore.  The following day the pain is mostly gone and its Friday. 

On Friday I have a lunchtime racquetball game against someone that is pretty good at getting to the ball.  We are in the middle of our game and its a ceiling shot.  The normal return is to return it back to the ceiling.  I turn to follow the ball and make sure that is indeed what he is doing and I see a blue rocket coming at my face.  He smashes the ball straight into my left cheek where I was just elbowed 3 days earlier.  Boy does it hurt!  After the game I see myself in the mirror and it is 1/2 a circle and totally bruised (redish and purple).  Then Sunday comes and its mother’s day.  As I am out with Millie people keep telling me I have lipstick on my face (it sorta looks like 1/2 a lip print also).  I have to tell them its a bruise, not lipstick.  I’ll be posting a picture soon.

Now its Tuesday, one week from when I had gotten the elbow to the face.  I have a T-Ball game with Johnathan (5 and 6 year old kids).  There is a kid on the team that tended to throw the bat.  I have been telling him constantly to NOT throw the bat after he hits.  I enfoce it just before he gets up to bat, and he forgets right after he hits and the bat goes flying again.  The other coach was working batting with the kids and I was trying to pay attention to when this kid gets up to bat to tell him again not to throw the bat.  He had told me he had been working on not throwing the bat this past weekend.  So I watch one by one as the kids get up to bat.  A parent starts asking me a question and when I turn to see where he is in the lineup THE BAT IS COMING RIGHT AT ME!  WHAM!!! The metal bat hits me right on the elbow.  So that has buised and gotten a bump.

To sum it up in a 8 day period I got elbowed in the face, three kicks to the cup, a racquetball hit to the face and hit on the elbow with a metal bat. 

This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 12:52 pm and is filed under Mark Sr.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.