Blue Belt

Chapter 18

                                                                      XVIII.                                                         

        "Evvvveryone in line."  That's how Reeder announced his arrival to us a week later at our normal green belt class.  Mr. Vargo had been conducting class for the past week or so and it was good to see Mr. Reeder back, but he seemed to have a certain enthusiasm to his step as he walked out to get us going after stretching. 

            "Okay.  This is going to be fun."  He continued as he arrived front and center.  "Let's start.  Forty crisp front kicks, one leg at a time, I'll count."  He said as he got us going on a swift count.  I was about seventeen kicks in when he stopped us saying,  "Oops, Julie, that's not good enough."  There was a pause as he walked over towards Julie with a smirk.  "Everyone begin again.  We'll all get this right here."  We started anew.  "Right?  Right?"  He asked rhetorically.  His tone of voice was such that he seemed more on the fun loving side at the moment, but at the same time it was scary because there was an even higher intensity in the pace of what we were doing that I had not really felt before; at least recently.     

            We made it through the front kicks even though it was not exactly pretty.  We finished the right leg up just fine, but ended up going through the left side for almost three more complete sets because he caught one of us having "unsatisfactory implementations, and on the most basic of moves."  Tomas recounted later that we had done just about one hundred and twenty front kicks with the left leg, and we did them quite swiftly.

            "Now we're going to do twenty, perfect form, but we're going to hold the leg out there for ten seconds each time.  If wobbling gets extreme, we start again."  He said to us all while facing Kim with a smile on his face.  It's not that we had not practiced these balancing acts.  We felt ready.  We had been through conditioning, and although there was some wobbling, it was only enough for him to issue a brief reminder.  I thought to myself that it least it was not Vargo pulling this, with all of his sarcasm in the mix as well.  I was impressed as we made it past the front kicks.

            "Now give me seventy pushups."  Tomas even kind of rolled his eyes as Reeder issued the next command.  After all, this was not kick boxing class. "You guys give me another forty on the knuckle."  Reeder added as we were hammering through the first round of pushups.  "You two just go for another forty period.  If you can."  He said as he was looking at Kim and Julie.  "Can you?"  He asked Julie kind of leaning down in front of her.  The class went on like this too.  We did the most basic of moves, but with a total emphasis on endurance.  All of us guys in the class were drenched with sweat when we reached the half way point of the class.  I think that all of us reached our own point of resistance in terms of also rolling our eyes or shrugging.  Kim and Julie were also quite sweaty, and Kim looked exhausted, even though I could tell her technique was spot on.  We would alternate between his looking for solid form on the basic moves, and then doing lots of repetitions.  Then, after some rounds on a few different moves, he would add these more aerobic type exercises in  between which made it all the more brutal to get through.

            I was very determined to get through all the routines and survive that class.  He forced Ron and Kim off the floor with a good ten minutes left, claiming that they were making an effort, but that their technique had suffered because of fatigue.

            "Not with it.  Not at all."  He said as he cast them aside for the day.  I felt bad for Kim too.  She worked her proverbial ass off with awesome executions.  She just got too exhausted at the end.  Tomas was the next to go.  With about five minutes left he dismissed himself from the floor.