The Wednesday Warriors

So I am back from my weekly class of Krav Maga. As for last week and the week before, I thought I would write a post about my experience. You might get a post about it every Wednesday, if I am not too tired and if there is anything to tell. So anyway, about this class... I am still not in shape, but getting there. I started feeling dizzy a few times, especially at the beginning, but now I know when to stop and I have the wisdom to drink water. I feel far less pain at the beginning, although I think I got one or two bruises (mainly because I had to fall down). I need to learn to hit harder, it has to become something natural. Hitting harder in training is both good for the hitter and the hitted(?): it hardens both. But I am pushing myself more and more, and it is less and less exhausting. At the end of the lesson, I could have stayed a bit longer to practice more with others. Some students who are not in the advanced class stay a few minutes more. I left because, well, I thought I needed my supper and a shower and should not delay them too much. Maybe that was a mistake. Next week, I might stay longer. More exercise would do me good: looking at myself in the mirror earlier, I thought I definitely needed to lose weight.

Now a few anecdotes about the evening. There were three more newbies this week, all three women of various ages. I received my "welcome pack", basically a couple of sheets of paper explaining basic principles of hand to hand combat, written in plain terms by our instructor. According to him, it is particularly important that we read about adrenaline: how to gain it, keep it, etc. I remember how bored stiff I used to be when I read rules and techniques of a sports in PE classes when I was a kid. This actually sounds like fun, or at least fascinating read. I don't know many of my fellow wannabe warriors' names, but at least I know a few. They cannot pronounce mine, neither can the instructor. He thus calls me "Guilly". He rechristened a couple of students like this. I don't like Guilly much, but I will have to get used to it. I would have preferred Bill or something, maybe I should have asked to be called like this. But Guilly it will be (shudder). Not much of a name for a warrior. I decided to refer to us on this blog as the Wednesday Warriors. It is fitting that we train on Wednesday: Wednesday is of course the Day of Wotan, or Odin. The Norse king of the gods is also a warrior. And my long time readers know how much I love Odin. A warrior god for a warrior race. Granted, Vikings were not Israëli, but all the same, Krav Maga could have been invented by them. And Guilly sounds vaguely Scandinavian. So here it is. The Wednesday Warriors.