Yes, it would seem I am now an official 'Aikiaddict'. Seriously. After only one month returning to training and seven weeks post-op, I decided to enrol for summer school again. Apparently, I should have taken six weeks off training not three so that my muscles could 'knit' back together- but I was told three! (Honest). So you guess I was a little nervous about going as I was still healing but I'd 'survived' two club sessions a week for a month so was ready and rearing to go.
This year was fantastic. It really was. There was a huge variety of different aspects of Aikido covered so we covered a fair bit over the two days that I was there.
But it came to me that I definitely an 'Aikiaddict' when I sign up for two days of pain. It would seem that there are two aspects to the pain associated with martial arts- mental and physical pain. I've found summer school to be both. It's an absolute out of this world experience as you can train with many different people and learn different techniques and skills not covered at club level but at the same time you have to fight physical and mental exhaustion. After the first day, you tend to be a bit sore and stiff. By lunchtime of the second day, you feel that you may never breakfall again. And I will be very very honest here- there are times when you don't want to get back on that mat, but you know you have to as the moment you stop you stiffen up, so it's far less painful to keep going.
Funnily enough, I was less sore this year. But I don't think this anything to do with me being 'tougher'- last year I experimented with Deep Heat and found it useful. This year I was prepared- I used Deep Heat before and after each day and found it really helped. So, why did I do it? Well, I really enjoyed last year and wanted to meet up with everyone I had trained with-but I also wanted to see if I could do it again and 'survive' the pain.
My advice is if you get the chance at training at a summer camp or any camp for that matter, do it. You won't regret it. At the time you may feel that you never ever want to do anything like that again, but you will recover...and find that the physical and mental pain that you endured during that time was worth it.
