Arnold Martial Arts competition
Arnold Martial Arts competition
Categories: Martial Arts, 1562 wordsSend feedback • PermalinkThis weekend I drove up to Ohio to attend the Arnold 2008 Classic, a sporting conference which includes a large martial arts competition. The drive was eight hours, and rather pleasant. I enjoy driving, and this drive included a trip through the West Virginia mountains. Stopping by a gas station in Ravensburg, WV, I pumped my gas at an old fashioned gas station (you know, the kind without such nice features as "pay at the pump" or "three choices of gas" or "more then two feet between pumps") and ate at an old fashioned Italian restaurant (where the employees all had matching shirts and two widescreen plasma TVs adorned the walls) before crossing the Ohio river and continuing on to Columbus on Highway 33.
The first day at the conference was an interesting one. The first thing I noticed was how important nutrition seemed to be to everybody. More than half of the booths seemed to focus on sports drinks and food, with things like workout equipment and training facilities taking a back seat. Personally I never take much interest in thing like energy drinks and pills and energy bars and whatever else people want you to buy. They make it out to be the best thing since sliced bread, but I don't think it's any better or cheaper than a steak and egg sandwich, if you're essentially just after protein and carbs. But it's what everybody was talking about, and you couldn't pass a booth without one of the booth babes shoving some in your face, so I got to thinking maybe I was missing out on something. Later on I brought it up with Master Rondy and she replied, "Well, there's a lot of money in it." Well duh. End result: I still don't pay any attention to that crap.
On the second day I woke up early to help with the Tae Kwon Do tournament. The people from my school, White Tiger TKD in Cary, went to officiate the competition at Arnold. They were short-handed so I went to assist them despite the fact that I haven't done any TKD in a while. It was very fun though, they recruited me to perform on the demo team, executing a demonstration for the public between the forms and sparring competitions. This was pretty fun, and it went over very well. They did the thing where they put an apple at the end of a stick, and one of the masters does a backflip and kicks it and makes applesauce for the crowd. My job was to break a board performing a jumping snap kick, and then hold some boards for the masters to perform some cool kicks. One of these boards broke in three pieces, the third striking my face. It didn't hurt though, it was actually kind of fun.
Day three. This is the big day. I am entered into a Hapkido competition, but I am not expecting much because Hapkido is not a very popular sport. Turns out, one other person registered. I met him a short time before the competition. He was a bit older than me, but about the same height and weight and seemed like a nice guy. He had a couple stripes on his black belt to match my Bodon, but I wasn't so worried about winning as much as having fun. He was the instructor of some of the students in the TKD competition. We chatted it up about the competition, about Hapkido and other things. Hapkido is essentially used for self-defense, but incorporates skills from many other disciplines including Judo and Jiujitsu, falling skills, and of course your standards kicks and punches. Since it was only the two of us, we spoke with the judges an decided to do a light exhibition-style fight, using light kicks and punches, with emphasis on takedowns and some ground fighting. After all, we wanted to attract some attention to the sport, and having loud, interesting ground fights is a great way to do that; and we didn't want any injuries.
Eventually the fight came under way. We bowed to the referee and the judges and each other and the fight began. He came straight out of the box with some of the most powerful kicks I've ever received. Yelling between every one, he barely left room for me to keep my balance. Trying to fend off his kicks, get some kicks of my own in, and try to get inside for a takedown proved to be more than I could handle. On one kick he came in on my right side, and I turned into it and blocked it with my left arm. It hurt a lot. The ref broke up the fight. My arm was feeling rather strange and I didn't want to fight that dude anymore so I called it off.
After the fight the medals were given (I got second place obviously) and I went immediately to the first aid station to ask for some ice to put on my arm. They started asking some questions like, "Does it tingle and feel numb?" (A bit.) "Can you move your fingers?" (Yes.) "Can you push on my hand like this?" (No.) In the middle of the questioning my arm began to get very sore and my head began to feel light. I asked for a seat, but after a bit they quickly moved me to the floor. They noted a large contusion on my arm and put ice on it. The pain in my arm became intense. I started having trouble speaking. The medic informed me that this was the body's reaction to a great deal of pain -- to black you out so that you stop doing whatever it is that's hurting you and focus the body's resources on damage control. I already knew that though.
They decided to take me to the hospital. Master Rondy was kind enough to grab my bag and ride in the ambulance with me. The pain on the ride was getting pretty intense. The EMT on the ambulance was named Mike, and I talked to him about his military background to take my mind off the pain. They couldn't give me morphine because my blood pressure is very low. (It's not always good to have low blood pressure, apparently.) I was about convinced that I had broken the bone at this point, due to all the pain. At the hospital they gave me an anti-inflammatory, which isn't technically a painkiller but still reduces pain, and it helped a lot. Here was the x-ray:
A fracture, but not a break. This is actually very fortunate, you can barely see it. As far as injuries go it could have been a dislocation or a break, but minor fractures such as this heal quickly and are actually stronger than before. It will be wrapped in a sling for the next couple of weeks, and I'll be back to practice in a month.
As soon as I could I took a taxi back to the convention center an tried to find the guy to ask him WTF but he was gone. I tried to ask the judges but the only one who wasn't busy told me this kind of thing was standard practice. (I didn't buy that.) I think part of what went wrong was that the guy I was fighting was a teacher and his students were looking on, so he didn't have the luxury of going easy on me. I'm definitely going to think twice before fighting such a person again. But either way you look at it, there is no definition of a "light exhibition" fight that can lead to the fracture of someone's ulna. The guy's behavior and attitude was completely inappropriate for a fight of that nature, but I hope he managed to impress his students enough because I'm the one typing with one hand, and I don't think he wants to pay my medical bills.
I couldn't drive home. It's an eight hour drive from Ohio to North Carolina and the drug they gave me was no go for driving. The White Tiger people assigned two of the masters to drive me home, and so I found myself in a car with two Korean with only a working knowledge of English, driving across farmland and mountains. They jury-rigged a small LCD TV on the dash of my car, on which they had every episode of the seventh season of Friends. So basically Chandler and Monica get engaged, and Rachael and Ross have their thing, and Joey and Phoebe do what they do. You remember how it went. On the other hand, apparently in Korean English classes they don't teach any of the oblique sexual euphemisms used by the characters, which left me to embarrassingly explain the meaning of words like "loins" and "porn" and such. As fun as that sounds, I actually had a great time talking about the differences between Korea and the US, and commenting on the sights along the road, and generally making friends with two guys whose previous relationship with me was limited to a student/master one.
So that's the end of the story. Apart from the fracture, I had a lot of fun. One thing is for sure, I won't be taking part in any more Hapkido competitions any time soon.
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