Kung Fu Scramble

So I finally got up and got out Tuesday night for my first ever martial art class - Tai Chi Boxing. I found a class last week while browsing online and they are located in Chinatown which is like 10-15 minutes walk from my place. As usual, I got there a bit earlier because I'm a worrywort and I want to be prepared. From the address I was running through my head as to which building in Chinatown has 5 floors. When I got there, I realized that I've been in the building before helping Principe looking for a dress for his daughter's quinceañera. It's a pretty old building with no elevators. The poster hanging outside says that they are closed on Tuesdays and I know how people often don't update their websites, but I thought "I'm already there, might as well walk up 5 flights and see if they are actually there."

To my surprise, one class of Wing Chun is already commencing on the 4th floor and there is actually an instructor and a student on the fifth floor. The instructor then told me that the first class is free and even though the class is from 6:30pm to 9:30pm, it actually doesn't officially starts until 7:30pm. Oh well. The instructor is actually Puerto Rican, a 30-something shorter cubish guy with a pretty nice chest, actually quite cute and he kept a beard like mine. I wasn't ready for my kung fu master/father to be that young. He kept on talking about his skills and how the Chen family Tai Chi boxing is better than all the rest, keep on boasting about his experience in training blackwater mercenaries and stuff. From all the kung fu TV series and movies, I have learned that skillful masters don't run their mouth like that. I think culturally, we believe that if you've got skills it'll speak for itself, for us boasting is for the weak, but then he's a gringo so he wouldn't know.

Around 7:30pm, a few other guys showed up and the class officially began. The first pose we did was the one illustrated in the picture above. The first thing I noticed about Tai Chi is that we do a lot of squatting. We bent our knees and held the pose for like 10 minutes and from then on everything we did involves some kind of knee bending and position holding. It requires a certain amount of endurance and strength. After a game of Simon sez, following whatever the master was doing, we got into a pair practice of hand pushing. The objective is to direct a person's force and distribute it around the body and to the ground so that when people are pushing you, you can hold your ground and not fall back. It was kinda fun and surely a lot to learn. I got to try out with the master and he gave me quite a bit of pointers and he's quite attractive until I found out that he's married that is.

The class is going well and people seemed friendly accept one guy who from the beginning seems like an asshole. Like me, he was a beginner. A tall red bear type with a nice chest... lol, wearing a brown t-shirt with drawings of asparagus and a saying "just the tips". He seems very combative and when he get to practice he got competitive and tried to push me to the ground. Thank god I had some skills and experience from following my grandma to their Tai Chi sessions on the hill park right next to where we live when I was a kid and that I wasn't "using force".

The class is generally fun, but by the end I was quite exhausted and just as I thought my thighs are still hurting like crazy today, they are all shaky like they were egg beaters. They ache so much when I walk and when I go down the stairs, and they feel solid and huge. I must continue practicing my squats. It was quite embarrassing when they trembled during the lesson and the wooden floor squeaked like it was an earthquake. Anyway, I think I'll go back.