While I was gathering my exercise books and saying goodbye to Bessie, Rettle had time to disappear from the doorway, and, as before, I only caught up with him in the basement. This made me wonder whether he actually knew how to teleport.
Once I was back in our improvised dojo, I proudly examined the marks I left on my column during the previous class. Rettle was standing before me in his usual black sportswear, legs shoulder width apart and arms crossed, again reminding me of a strict bouncer who decides whether you are going in or not. Strict but very small. His tough pose would have been a little comical, if I didn’t know what he was capable of.
“Today we are going to practice kicks,” said Rettle in his lifelessly serene voice.
“Kicks? Am I through with punching practice?”
“No.”
I expected some kind of explanation of why we were about to work on kicks after just one session of punches, but my teacher must have decided that a ‘no’ would suffice.
“So my punches are okay, is that why we are doing kicks?”
“Your punches are terrible.”
This harsh reply had me a little flustered. Rettle noticed it and decided to give a more detailed comment.
“Your punches are terrible, but your kicks are even worse. I’m not going to prepare you for the Olympics, this is training for real-life combat. We are not going to practice all types of blows each after each until you perfect them. First I’m going to teach you the basics of everything. In a real fight mediocre punching, kicking, holds, submission locks and chokes are much more useful than mastery of one type of strike. We are going to begin your training with the most important things and what you are the worst at. After you learn a little bit of everything, we will go back to square one and practice everything in a new way, at the next level of complexity. So I will teach you in rounds, getting back to the same things over and over again.”
“Sounds good. How do we start?”
“Get in the stance.”
I stood as Jack taught me – one foot behind the other, fists level with my chin. Rettle didn’t say anything, only touched my left elbow, indicating that I should raise my hands higher.
“First, the front kick. It serves both for attack and defense. Ideally, it should be a heel kick to the solar plexus. The solar plexus concentrates many nerves, therefore a skillful strike is very painful and makes it impossible to breathe properly.”
The coach stopped and looked at me questioningly. I nodded.
“This is how to perform a front kick,” Rettle also assumed the fighting stance. “Bring your back leg in front. At the highest point, your knee should be level with your chest. Then you extend your leg, aiming between the lower end of the breastbone and the beginning of the abdomen.”
Rettle poked his finger in me, showing me the place, where to hit. Then he instantly swung his leg and demonstrated a front kick in action. His heel stopped less than a half-inch from my solar plexus. I even had the time to feel my stomach shrink in expectation of terrible pain. If it were not for Rettle’s stony expression, I would have thought he was showing off and trying to scare me. But I doubted that my coach would want to bolster his self-esteem by harassing teenagers. More likely, this sort of thing was an important part of his training method – look in the face of your fear or something like that.
“Do you get it?”
I nodded.
“Repeat.”
I took a step back, swung my leg and kicked the air.
“That’s not a front kick, it’s a leg swing. People kick a ball that way. Your foot and leg rise in an arch. They must project in front instead. If you try to kick this way, you won’t do much damage and you’re very likely to break your toes. Instead of one movement where you just swing the leg, do two: first, raise your bent leg and then launch your foot forward.”
Rettle illustrated his words, slower this time and in two clear stages. I repeated after him.
“Good. Enough for now. Repeat a few times to fix it, then change the stance and do the same for the other leg.”
I started practicing front kicks. Rettle stood to my side and observed.
“You dropped your arms.”
“We’re kicking, aren’t we?”
“I’m preparing you for a fight, not the can-can dance. In real life, there are no separate kicks and punches. In a fight, you need to be engaged completely, from the tips of your toes to the top of your head. The head is the most vulnerable part of the body, and you always need to protect it, even when you hit someone with a baseball bat, let alone kicks. The opponent can always dodge and strike back. Go on, do ten more front kicks with each leg and remember your defense.”
I began thrashing the air in front of me again, this time minding not only my legs but my arms and my head.
“Enough. The next strikes are the low, middle and high kicks. All of them are round kicks. Unlike the front kick, they are delivered from the side, and the leg twists in the direction of the blow along the torso. So, your leg needs to draw a full 360-degree circle in the air, and the rest of you must do a complete turnaround. The full circular movement will charge the kick and when your leg meets the opponent, he will receive the full charge of energy put into moving along the entire trajectory.”
Rettle performed the same kick he had hacked the column with the day before.
“The low kick is delivered to a thigh, the middle kick is to the torso, the high kick is to the head.”
Rettle again showed his kick, slower this time, so I could have a good look.
“There is an important detail here. Your leg must not fly from the ground in a straight line. If that happens, you will only deal a grazing blow, and most of the impulse will be wasted. The leg needs to be parallel to the ground when it contacts the opponent’s body.”
Rettle drew a few circles in the air with his leg, at different heights.
“Your turn. And remember your defense.”
I got into the stance and started drawing circles with my legs in the air. Rettle was silent, but I was puffed up with pride. This time I managed to do everything right on the first try.
“No more theory for today,” said Rettle. “Four basic kicks are quite enough to start with. Practice on the dummy for the rest of the class.”
“Dummy? Which dummy?”
Rettle pointed to my column.
“To kick the concrete? I can do front kicks, I guess, but the side kicks are going to hurt.”
“Don’t kick too hard at first, and then crank it up a notch as you get used to it.”
“It'll probably still hurt.”
“There’s going to be pain anyway. The point of practicing blows for many hours isn’t only to perfect the technique but also to strengthen the body.”
ns 15.158.61.4da2