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Post by Noa on Jun 8, 2019 18:33:39 GMT -6
That was, except that there would be no physical poles in place to force him into the correct positions.
But then, given his trials and tribulations today, that might have been preferable in terms of a practice environment.
The creature took another drink from the bucket, going to it without Rabbit having to bring it out for him. He must have spotted it some time after Rabbit had put it away. Left with this spare time, Rabbit tidied what she could of the gym equipment they had disturbed, but there wasn’t much to do in this regard. They had only used the poles, which had already been set up when they arrived, and she suspected that the next person to use them would have to rearrange them again, so there was no sense in returning them to their original positions.
Once both of them were satisfied with what they had done, they left the facilities, and made way for home.
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Post by Noa on Jun 8, 2019 18:34:45 GMT -6
They returned early the next day. It had become a habit for them to come in the morning, after Rabbit was done with the morning duties given to her on the property. There was a great deal of literature on when was the best time for exercise, and morning came strongly recommended by some of that literature, but that wasn’t the primary reason that they had fallen into this particular habit. It had altogether more to do with the fact that the city was less crowded in the early hours, because most people, for whatever reason, were still resting or preparing at home.
The creature did not bear people or company so badly as Aster did, so long as no one tried to interfere with him directly, but nevertheless he was not fond of being… crowded in. Rabbit had observed some small cases of this in the past, and had made adjustments to their schedule to account for it.
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Post by Noa on Jun 8, 2019 18:35:01 GMT -6
Those few who were out and about in the hours after dawn, walking their pets or going for their own exercise--- for much of the literature about morning exercise was in fact directed at humanoids, and not about creature training--- tended to steer well clear of them. People here were largely accustomed to monsters, but many of them knew full well what those monsters could do, particularly one that looked somewhat unusual.
They walked past the hall and into the outdoor area, coming to the specific region that they had been practicing in the day before. The creature was walking in circles, presumably to warm up and give himself a chance to rouse. He had not been awake for very long, so his state of alertness was not fully what it would usually be. Rabbit, who did not sleep, had no such concerns, and thus went directly to the poles, so as to arrange them for the creature’s needs when he had prepared himself.
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Post by Noa on Jun 8, 2019 18:35:13 GMT -6
He wasn’t to start straight away, but she would be guiding him through his stretches first, and then there would be no time for her to attend to the poles. It was just as well that the creature was busying himself with other things in the meantime.
But interestingly enough, once she had a closer look at the poles, she realized that they were arranged in the same positions that she had left them in before. There was no visible change. She inspected them more closely, half thinking that she had been mistaken in her initial assessment, and measured the distance between each pair separately, But in the end, she could only come to the same conclusion that she had before: they hadn’t been moved.
Either someone else had been training a creature with similar needs and proportions, or there had been no one using this pole area in the intervening time.
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Post by Noa on Jun 8, 2019 18:35:31 GMT -6
Rabbit could not believe that any trainer who came her could be so inattentive as to simply leave the pole arrangement as is if it did not suit the creature that they were working with at the time. Gym training was generally an undertaking for devoted trainers looking to enhance their creatures’ combat prowess, so there was a certain level of care involved.
Rabbit thought about it for a moment, but the conclusion that she ultimately came to was that it must have been the latter--- that the gym attendance in general was low. Nimbleness was usually quite a sought after quality for fighters, but there was a tournament going on right now, and all the trainers who participated must have completed their training beforehand. Now the impetus was largely over with, and they were spending their time elsewhere, doing other things.
She had seen advertisements for the next tournament too, in her time about town.
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Post by Noa on Jun 8, 2019 18:35:47 GMT -6
In fact, advertising it near the gym was not uncommon, as the people who came here also tended to be interested in that sort of thing. But that was a ‘petite’ tournament, designed for smaller creatures, and if anyone was devoting their time to gym training for those, they must have been doing it indoors, where the facilities for smaller creatures were kept.
Seeing that there wasn’t actually much for her to do, she went back to the creature, who stopped and looked up at her approach. “We will be doing stretches again, unless you have any objections,” she said.
The creature made a dismissive gesture, flicking his ears and inclining his head. Rabbit took that as an acquiesce, and moved to his side. “Stand with your spine straight please,” she said. The creature did so, straightening himself out, though his tail was still inclined to wander. But Rabbit figured that was probably not much of an issue.
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Post by Noa on Jun 8, 2019 18:36:23 GMT -6
“Do you remember the positions from last time?” she asked. The creature needed no more prompting to assume the cat stretch, though the morning sluggishness made him slow at it. Rabbit counted for him, and then he came out of it, but this time, Rabbit said, “Now we will alternate it with another. For this, assume your normal standing position.” The creature did so, though there was an air of anticipation about him, since she had pointed this out as a new thing that he was to learn. “Yes. Please leave your feet where they are, but now I would like you to arch your back, so that your stomach rises, as much as possible.”
To encourage him to do this, she placed a hand under his stomach, pushing gently up. The creature, though with a look of… not surprise and not discomfort exactly, but something mildly in the neighborhood of both, did as she asked.
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Post by Noa on Jun 8, 2019 18:36:44 GMT -6
Rabbit kept the contact in place until he had arched himself to her satisfaction, then removed her hand and said, “Please hold this position for another count of fifteen, then move back into the lower stretch.”
In this way, they repeated the set of two stretches three times each, before she moved on to the ones involving his legs. Now that they were in familiar territory and the creature knew roughly what to expect, he relaxed and let her do as she liked. It perhaps helped that the leg stretches also required less of his own involvement, such that he was able to simply let her manipulate his limbs for him, and could turn his mind to other things. Occasionally she still had to remind him to hold himself straight, but otherwise he seemed to be contemplating something else, or perhaps simply dozing slightly.
They had only done one of each stretch the last time, but this time Rabbit held each leg for three rounds before moving onto the next.
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Post by Noa on Jun 8, 2019 18:37:03 GMT -6
“How does it feel?” she asked when she had finished, and had released him from her hold.
The creature stretched out his own hind legs, and opened his jaws wide in a yawn. Well, it was good that he was relaxed. Considering the amount of frustration that he had at times accumulated while doing this training yesterday, perhaps this would be of better assistance to him as a preparatory tactic.
But there was no further reason for delay, and so she guided him to the poles once more, so that he could apply himself to the main exercise that they were working on. The creature regarded the first pole with an unhappy look, then breathed a sigh and stepped around it.
It was not unlike how he had been after his first break, the day before. His lack of full wakefulness might also have contributed to it, but whatever the precise reasons, he could only make his way through the poles slowly.
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Post by Noa on Jun 8, 2019 18:37:20 GMT -6
Rabbit was concerned for a moment that he had somehow lost his progress, but then he reached his second pass, and then a third, and his progress began to improve rapidly. It took until the third pass for him to get up to where he had been yesterday, but it was only the third, and they both expected to be here for quite a bit longer than that.
It seemed that there was a delay in recall, and that was the issue he was facing when he began the exercise anew. Rabbit reminded herself not to be too hasty to judge this, and to think of these rounds as something like a continued warm up. She remembered, too, that this creature wasn’t learning these things specifically to perform in combat, though the argument was a little less convincing as the things she was teaching him began to become closer to what Aster would have taught his battle ready creatures.
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Post by Noa on Jun 8, 2019 18:37:31 GMT -6
But if it wasn't for a combat purpose, then it didn't matter so much that it took the creature a little time to warm up. There was no need to rush.
In the meantime, the creature himself was making good headway with the poles. As he ran the line of poles a few more times, he began to go faster, first as a fast walk and then at a slow run. It was beginning to look something like what one might actually expect to see a creature perform at an agility course, which many of the obstacles in this area seemed to be modeled after, if on a much larger scale than usual. Granted, Rabbit had never seen any such competitions on her own, but she felt that such competitions generally took place with smaller creatures.
As he began to go faster, however, the creature began to experience new and different problems. It wasn’t merely about moving quickly.
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Post by Noa on Jun 8, 2019 18:37:43 GMT -6
The poles meant that the creature could not achieve a proper run, the way his body would have been accustomed to moving. Going faster didn’t just mean completing the movements themselves more quickly. As his speed increased, he was going to have to move more efficiently too. It wouldn’t take the same number of steps to run the course as it did to walk it, especially not if he was ever going to attempt to run it at full tilt.
The result was that the steps he’d memorized by rote no longer fit perfectly with the route that he was attempting to run. And that meant that the creature was back to tripping himself up, and suffering all the consequences for it. Not too long after, he ran into a pole again, and was forced to stop, making a low rumble of displeasure deep in his chest. It looked as though it had been painful, running into the pole like that.
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Post by Noa on Jun 8, 2019 18:37:56 GMT -6
He wasn’t wholly deterred, but she watched him work himself back up to his original speed, and as soon as he hit it, he began having more troubles. She wanted to help, but she didn’t immediately know how to, since she was also only just beginning to learn how to do this. It wasn’t as if she had done extensive gym training with a creature before either.
She was forced to simply watch for a while, so she could figure out some ideas about how he could work his way through this. In the meantime, it was possible that the creature could figure out his own solutions. But if she had a suggestion that she thought might speed up the process, then she would certainly give it.
After a moment, she came to a conclusion, and signaled for him to stop. “I think,” she said, “you are not changing directions quickly enough."
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Post by Noa on Jun 8, 2019 18:38:37 GMT -6
She continued. “When you are running, there are not enough steps for you to level out straight, so you need to plan to change directions every time your feet touch the ground, rather than levelling out for a recovery period like you have been.” At a walking speed, it had been sufficient, and it had given him a moment in which to check himself, but this was no longer the case. And unfortunately, the faster he went, the more uncomfortable the consequences would be for any mistakes, by the mere principle of how momentum worked. She didn’t say this portion, however, as the latter would have just been pointing out the obvious, and she felt that the former was already implied.
The creature lashed his tail, and rubbed at his nose with a claw, but eventually he managed to convince himself to try it again. Say what she might about the other challenges of working with him, once he had found his motivation, he tended not to lose it easily.
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Post by Noa on Jun 8, 2019 18:39:03 GMT -6
He went back to the start of the course, and began running it again.
Rabbit had a sense that he was trying to do what she told him, but of course it wouldn’t begin working immediately. He still had to figure out how to do it, and in the process of figuring it out, he was going to make mistakes. Moreover, because of the nature of the problem, it wasn’t something he could practice first at a slower pace. Once he slowed down, there would be room to return to the gait he had been using before.
There was nothing for him to do but to run. At least as time went on, he began to have a better sense of when he was losing control, and then he could dig his claws into the track to pull himself to a stop before he ran into the pole with some unfortunate part of his body.
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