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Friday, day 5. I find it extremely keen that we started PCP on a Monday; it's just nice and easy to count. We do alot of counting on PCP, so I noticed today when both the number of reps in the set AND the number of sets increased. Whussup with that?

Actually forget that question, because today New Hotness was spinnin' like the gold rims on a tricked out Escalade! I jumped damn well, thanks. Only problem (THE problem) is that I have this subtle mistiming between my spinning and my jumping, and after about 50 jumps the difference is big enough that I start clipping my shoes, and it's only a matter of time before I smack shins or land on the rope or something. But still: progress!

Squats were dare I say easy, push-ups were not but I got through them all. Situps hurt. But I did them all, especially that last one, just like my old karate instructor told me: you can ALWAYS do one more.

See, when I was little, my mom called me Spunky, because I was (was?) a total spaz; could not sit still and always needed to DO something. So one summer I got enrolled in a local karate class. Generally these urban karate classes involve a dude in white pajamas with a black belt and a bunch of kids in white pajamas wearing different colored belts, running and jumping and punching and kicking and giving mom a break for a couple hours.

Luckily, my dojo had two things going for it:

1. It was associated with the Ryobukai, which I found out later was quite bad-ass. Remember the sensei in the first Conan movie who teaches Arnie how to use a sword? That guy ran Ryobukai. (He also helped with the knife-fighting in the Dune movie.) So it had that ever so legit Hollywood connection, which in LA means everything.
2. My sensei was from Brazil.

You would think #1 was the more important point, but actually #2 was key. Sensei apparently grew up on the means streets of inner-ghetto Brazil, and he had three choices growing up:

1. Join a gang (and work for the drug cartels)
2. Join the police/army (and work for the drug cartels)
3. Join a dojo (and have at least a fighting chance of not getting killed by the drug cartels)

He took Door #3, and years later ended up in LA in an old fire station converted into a community rec center, running a bunch of spoiled suburban cry-babies through a gauntlet of karate kata, sparring, and pure, gut-busting exercise.

He would absolutely assault us: "One more. ONE more. You can't do ONE more? Surely you have the energy to do just one, JUST ONE more?"

Needless to say, this was the early 80s, the ninja boom was in full effect, and the dojo Japanese he used when training us is the very reason why I got into martial arts, studied Japanese, came to this crazy country and have been here ever since.

So as I lay on that sweaty blue mat on the cold concrete floor, underneath the fluorescent lights in the parking garage, panting and wanting to just stop, I done enough, I saw sensei looming over me, the perma-tan, the springy hair, the 80's molester mustache, the ratty, shredded black belt with it's mysterious yellow embroidery (his budo name! how cool is that? In KANJI!), and he was just looking at me with the quizzical furrowed and oh-so-bushy brow, as he admonishes:

"One more?"