Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Tesoura

One of my fellow capoeristas has the apelido "Alicate," which means "pliers." Supposedly, our mestre gave it to him because his tesoura, which means "scissors," looked more like pliers. Pliers sound more clumsy than scissors, but otherwise I hadn't given the difference much thought. But last night in capoeira we worked on tesoura and responses to it, and suddenly it made sense - the legs cross over each other, just like scissor blades. (All became clear in an unfortunate moment when another student was struck in the ladybits because she wasn't doing that.)

Made sense mentally, that is - understanding something and doing it consistently are separate things, as I proved a few minutes later when I jammed my hip as I am prone to do by landing without my left foot straight forward when coming out of a cartwheel. I know better, and I know that my hip will hurt for a couple of days from one bad landing. But when my focus is on doing a one-handed cartwheel over someone else without getting head-butted and while maintaining eye contact and without landing on them … well, I don't have everything internalized yet, and the concentration on something is bound to slide.

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