I swear it isn't just an excuse to keep out of armour...

[kareina]

As has become usual for me, I am a bit behind on posting to LJ, let me see if I can remember all of my recent adventures...

When I left off I was anticipating actually attending the shire fighter practice, for the first time since returning from Australia. The first batch of practices after I got back either we were out of town that weekend, or there were posts to the shire forum saying no heavy practice that week. Eventually we settled into the habit of enjoying the chance to catch up on sleep on Sunday mornings, and then spend the rest of the morning working on projects until time to head to the Folk music session, and so we got into the habit of not even checking the forum to see if practice was on. However, aelfgyfu brought her armour all the way from An Tir, so it would have been a shame for her not to attend FP, and if we were driving her out there we should bring my armour, too, so we did.

It was fun! The local practice actually has a "training" component to it, every time, which I really appreciate (and need!). It turns out that so much time of not even doing slow work has (unsurprisingly) had the effect of my not using my body properly, so most of my blows were light. I also quit earlier than the others because my forearms were not happy with the weight of my sword and shield in conjunction with the unusual movements. Sigh. Must do something about that. On Sunday I told myself that I would go to the gym a couple of times during the week, and do some slow work to get my arms used to moving my sword and shield around again. Did I achieve this goal? Nope. Didn't make it to the gym at all, and only did slow work with lord_kjar once, and we used invisible shields then, so my body hasn't had the chance to make any progress towards thinking that swinging a stick and blocking blows is easy.

Today is Sunday once again, and we will totally go to practice, but I am thinking I shouldn't armour up. Thursday evening I managed to do something wrong to my shoulder at the end of yoga. I normally do a head-stand at the end of my yoga session, and sometimes, if lord_kjar is around I get his help on my "learn to do hand-stands" quest: I go into my head stand in front of him (back towards him once I am upside down), he grabs my ankles and pulls, which, combined with some pushing from my arms, gets me up into a hand-stand. So far it is mostly me standing on my hands with the upper part of my legs leaning against him, but on a few occasions I have managed to hold my self up for a second or three before having to lower my legs.

Thursday was different. He was in the next room on the computer, but as I started to go up into the headstand I called out to him asking if he happens to be free for hand-stand help. Once I got into the headstand I could see him coming, so I stayed there, waiting for him to come over. Instead of walking around to my back side (where he normally is for this), he grabbed my ankles from the front, and lifted. This changes everything in terms of how it feels--I couldn't find the balance point with my shins towards his shoulders instead of my calves, and I felt like I was going to fall over backwards. I panicked, tried desperately to hold on to something, anything, and let him know I felt like I was going to fall the wrong way, so he stepped back so he could lower my legs towards the floor. However, in that tiny amount of time something I did really messed up my left shoulder. In precisely the same way it got messed up when I jumped off the cliff in Cyprus.

On that occasion it took several days before the pain and discomfort went completely away, though by the second day I could move mostly normally again. This time I am feeling much better already, but there is some residual stiffness, and I am not certain that putting on a helm and swinging a stick (it is the sword arm side that bothers me) is a good idea.

However, we made a cake to bring to practice, so we have to go, even if I don't suit up. I will post photos of it (it is cute!) after people there have had a chance to see it.

In other news, Wednesday was Sweden's National Day, so it was a holiday from work, and our Folk Dance group had a performance at the celebrations in Gammelstad. It was much fun, despite the rain, and there were a reasonable number of folk in the crowd given the weather. We perform again next weekend for the big weekend of folk music activities, and again at Midsummer.

I didn't accomplish as much this week at work as I would have liked--the four day adventure-filled weekend I took while aelfgyfu was here left me rather tired and slow on Monday and Tuesday, but by Wednesday, when I had the day off for dancing, I was feeling pretty good, so on Thursday I actually spend the day playing with my data, and on Friday I finally got around to deciding which of the samples I have collected I actually want thin sections cut from, and got them ready to ship off to the company (in Canada!!!) that does that for us. I would have shipped them, too, but there was no one on duty in the uni shipping office when I checked, so it will have to wait till Monday.

Comments

[corvideye.livejournal.com]

An easy way to strengthen the arm moves at home is with a piece of rubber tubing or PT stretchy band - attach to door knob, floor, etc. (It helps a lot with my neck issues, I find.) Hope your shoulder feels better soon!