Comme ci, comme ça

For this week, I think that's probably the best descriptor of what's been going on.  I mean, it hasn't been a terrible week, but it also hasn't been incredibly spectacular either.  My body has been getting a couple weird semi-injury pains at various places around my body this week, and it makes me a bit resistant to push myself so far.  Back on Thursday of last week (week 6, October 15), I somehow moved my right leg  in a funny way during ballet and some tendoney thing started feeling a little wonky.  I don't remember really how it happened.  I wasn't doing something particularly weird.  It could have been from just walking or something.  I'm not really too sure.  It went away the day after, so I didn't think much of it, but on Tuesday of this week, we were doing some full speed double stardrops (i.e. - roll sideways down the fabric two full rotations) and the landing jerked my right leg outwards in an awkward way and that same part of my leg started to hurt a bit again.  Again, it didn't feel too serious, but it was just an odd pain I hadn't really felt before so I decided not to mess with it too much.  The really odd thing about it though was that when I would do a right leg sidestretch, I wouldn't feel anything from it, but when I'd stretch my left leg to the side, it'd start hurting a bit.  Muscles are weird.  That's all I've really got to say about that.  :P  On Wednesday, I went to the Outer Limits only instead of going to Open Studio or both just so I wouldn't strain that part of my leg.  By now my leg is definitely not giving me any more pain, but if it comes up again, I'll talk to a coach about it.

On Thursday, I went with a couple Pro-Track and otherwise NECCA-related friends to Woodman's Gymnastics (which is the place where the advanced NECCA tumblers go for their classes) for an hour long open gym thing they have there every so often.  I never really was the biggest fan of tumbling and whatnot, but I decided to give it a go.  I went on a trampoline for the first time in a long while, which was pretty fun.  We also set up one of those octagonal foam ring things that they usually have at gymnastics places and did some hoop diving through it, which really was fun and all at first, but once we tried doing hands and feet first, bum last jumps through, my wonderful intuition had me keep my head up, looking forward, so that caught on the outside of the ring, and while falling down to the other side, taking the ring with me, I ultimately smashed my face rather hard onto that octagonal ring, bending my glasses a real lot and scratching/bruising my face in two places... yeah, fun fun fun.  In fact, it actually completely broke the screw holding together the frame around the right lens.  It was just a big mess.  I basically just spent the rest of the hour just stretching and doing my handstands, which I guess was still time well spent.  When we got back, Anthony was very helpful in getting my glasses back together, and are now pretty much as good as new.  When I went to bed that night I realized a muscle in the right side of my upper back really felt incredibly tight, or pulled, or something, I'm not really sure, but it just hurt a bunch.  I'm not sure if that had anything to do with my crash, but I did only notice it after we came back from open gym.  It's getting better as of now, but I definitely still feel it, particularly when trying to look downwards.

During tumbling (i.e. - actual NECCA tumbling class) yesterday, I just felt a bunch of awkward pulling and whatnot on my shoulders, wrists, and just in a lot of places.  Nothing was really too serious, as everything felt back to normal when or soon after the class was over, but it just felt like a bit more than usual.  Maybe I'm becoming more aware of things going on with my body, or maybe I'm just really out of it.  *shrug*  It's been a weird week.

Anyway, anything ouchy aside, on Tuesday I had a wonderful trapeze semiprivate (i.e. - along with one other student) with Aimée.  We learned a cool trick called infinity turns, which is where you go upside down and grab onto one of the ropes with one leg and one arm and with the other arm grab the bar and you can spin around indefinitely without letting go of the bar.  It's very fun and cool looking.  I also tried out elbow circles for the first time that day, which went great.  I wore a padded jacket while doing them too, so they felt like nothing.  I actually found them a bit easier than I had first expected them to be, so I guess that's a pretty good thing.  I've been meaning to try them out again during member's only, but particularly with this new back muscle craziness, I don't want to be putting too much pressure from the bar on it.  We also worked on some Russian rolls to knees and ankles, which look awesome when done cleanly, as well as dropping from gazelle to ankles, also a really neat trick when done cleanly.

On Friday, our performancey/physical theatery/improvy day, we presented our one minute do a trick in a traditional circus style presentations, which were all very entertaining and fun.  I put on some fast paced american-produced-sounding Indian music, danced around a bit, and did a simple slackdrop on the fabric.   We also did some conditioning, the rather dangerous throw giant sticks at each other game, and run full speed into the crash mat as if you didn't know it was there game.  It was fun, entertaining, and fulfilling...all that good stuff.

I've just been tired a lot.  I'm not sure my body likes me too much right now, but I've been trying to go easy this week in particular.  As well, when I hit my face on Thursday, there was some weird, and rather negative, emotional release in myself after that happened... sometimes you just feel like you're doing so well, and then your negligence sometimes just comes back to slap you in the face.  I don't know one single dang thing more about why I'm here, why I'm doing what I'm doing, and why I'm going where I'm going.  Sometimes I feel like I'm the best at doing something...and other times I feel like I'm making a bit of a fool out of myself.  It all just feels particularly reminiscent of the majority of my senior year in high school... pretty much the hardest time I've ever had just trying to deal with my own self.  It was weird...pretty much instantly after I crashed it seemed to knock that back into me...I just need a little time, I think...it'll pass...  Maybe I'll regret this paragraph...but too late I guess.