adaptation, photography, and mixed martial arts... connected? Today, yes.

 
You'll have to pardon this v. random post, but this amused me.

This morning I wanted to take a photograph of my right fist since it now looks like this, after my first night of mixed martial arts (MMA) fitness class.

Note the thickly muscled wrist... (not!)

When Bear saw my band aids he suggested I wear gloves in class.

I wore gloves in class. =)

I have the knuckles of a desk jockey.

NEVER have fought in my life, was only punching a bag (the big body bag things), and not that hard, but apparently my body is adapted to NO STRESS in the knuckle department.


This is something the body can do which continues to amaze me; adapt to what is asked of it.

I saw a special on MMA and these guys traveled ALL OVER the world to find the biggest gurus in martial arts. One gentleman they studied with, an older, tiny Japanese man, told them they were going to work on toughening up their fists.

Full of enthusiasm, the guys said "Great! How?" 'cause they'd noticed his fists were like rocks.

High Sierra rocks

He said "by punching a rock."

?!?

 (a rock. Note tiny toddler for scale, as if the trees weren't enough...)

They look at each other, then back at him, and realize he isn't kidding.

NERD ASIDE: Repeated stress (weight bearing activities (running, jumping, punching)) makes the bones build up so, in the case of punching, your knuckles/hands become more dense and hard and tough. This study showed female boxers had higher bone density than non-boxing but otherwise similarly lean women (despite super low body fat which can lead to bone density loss).


He took them out to his punching rock (I know, ow!), and he starts slugging it.

And then they have to. Looked TOTALLY unfun.

I was stunned. And it's SO low tech it makes me insane. =)


Want fists of stone? Punch stone.

To become tough, you must BE tough. Kinda deep...

Like how my husband's grandpa had HUGE hands 'cause he'd been a farmer all his life and constantly did really hard work with them. He required a lot of his body, and it responded by getting bigger and tougher. SO COOL!

This amazing photo of farmer hands is from the Christmas River blog.

I e-mailed the author but it bounced back (an aol.com account) so if it's yours and you want it attributed any other way or removed, just yell at me (biobabbler at g mail dot com).

ANY how, in order to share my tiny badge of toughness (one knuckle oozed last night!) that I'm exceedingly proud of, I wanted to take a picture of it for facebook.

Take the photo, that is, via my Nikon D50 using my left hand without the view finder.

The fist picture at the start of this entry is the best of the 12 shots I had to take.

Here are just some of the other attempts...

 

Complete and total miss. But nice shot of quilt my friend made for my wedding. =)

Nice shot of biobabbler's burly wrist...

Closer view of quilt/couch, TINY smidge of actual target at extreme bottom of frame.

And a flash-washed fraction of my fist, and my livingroom.

=)

So, I guess today's message is,

in MMA as in photography,

If at first you don't succeed,

Try, try again.

(Bear as zen master, on a rock)

And you will grow stronger.

There's another class on Thursday.

I'm TOTALLY there.

=) 

xobb