A Chosen Few

Your lungs are burning from Muay Thai ladder drills and the Sifu keeps yelling, " sprawl!", and, "shoot!", and you are trying to remember the Gable choke you just learned today and the lactic acid in your muscles feels like lava. Hook, cross, lead kick, rear kick, "shoot!". You want to die. You are dying. Then your opponent drops his head for a micro-second and all those drills finally pay off as you wrap the neck, pull him into your guard and squeeze the carotid artery. Squeeze... When he taps, the release is sublime until you realize that you are only halfway through a five minute round and a quarter of the way through a three hour training day that leaves you feeling like the fifth car in a ten car pile up. And you are gonna do it all again tomorrow. Because you love it.