Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Kevin is "on" tonight.

I'm going to experiment with crossposting my training blog on Blogspot. It will likely be a slightly censored version. My training blog on Jiujitsuforums and on Submissions101 are set so that you have to be registered on the site to see them…. If Blogspot turns out to be a PITA, I will discontinue....

LOL…. I visited Dave's blog (the purple belt from my school), and the entry for Tuesday consists of a photo of a brown belt. And that's all. I guess that says all that needs to be said!


BJJ Wednesday night in Bellevue. JM was supposed to join me, but she bailed.

Lining up was a little surreal tonight... I am used to having Barron on my right, so we both kept lining up that way, and then one of us would remember that I now outrank him- and we had to shuffle around and switch places.

Professor Carlos seems to have a bit of a duel personality. He horses around before class like a teenage boy- and then once class starts, he turns into an army sergeant who makes us redo breakfall drills repeatedly because our mat-slapping is not in perfect unison.

Today before class, he ambushed one of the white belts and rolled around with him, then suddenly sat up and stared open-mouthed at the far end of the gym. When the white belt turned to look, Carlos took his back. Then they finished their roll. The white belt turned to pick up his attendance card off the mat where he'd dropped it, and Carlos used the distraction to pounce on him again and take him down. I'm starting to see that this guy is a little like CM, the Tiger master.... one is wise to not turn one's back on either gentleman at any time; there ain't no Safe Space in their worlds.

Guillotine defense to takedown to side control. Escape from headlock on the ground to take the back and chicken-wing armbar. Side control escape to replace full guard. I have seen all this stuff before, so I worked on doing it off both sides.

I was drilling with Kevin. He's not a big guy, but the first time he dropped into side control on me, I grunted aloud with the rib impact. From then on, I made sure to be slightly on my side with my arms already framed up firmly when he moved to get into the position.

A little positional sparring from side control, then a six-minute free spar. Kevin's good. He does appear to have some consistency problems. It seems like he has his "on nights" and his "off-nights". When he's on, he's very competitive on a level with me- he's fast, strong for his size, aggressive, pretty technical, and he has a lot of tricks that he obviously picked up from Cindy- most notably explosive rolls. When he's having an off-night, I tool on him. Tonight he was having an on night. He was doing a lot of aggressive driving into me. I could feel myself instinctively trying to work up the energy to meet him strength vs strength- but (fortunately for my continued constructive development) I was just too tired- so I was forced to relax, stay defensive and watch for openings. He got a couple of nice joint locks on me, but did not finish them. I'm not sure if he deliberately let me go, or what. Sometimes people do that, because I'm unusually flexible, and they have to push a lock on me further than they do on most people. Anyway, because he did not finish, I avoided being subbed by him tonight- but he did have me on the ropes much of the time. Professor Carlos was watching us, and called advice to me a few times (damn- me getting the advice means that I'm obviously LOSING). During the handshake line at the end of class, he looked me seriously in the eye and said, "Good training tonight, Keetsune... Good training." I hope that after he's been around longer, I will be able to read him well enough to tell whether he really means that or whether he's just trying to buck me up so that I won't be too discouraged by my high level of suckage. He's being supportive either way, though- so I'll take it.

I wish I had enough gas to do the no-gi class that runs after the gi class on Wed. nights in Bellevue.... but so far I have just not been able to face a second full hour (plus a second set of cardio exercises!).


I am thinking about competing in the next Revolution tournament on 11/13/10. (EEK!) I have always thought that I'd probably do at least a little competing, eventually. I've been given a shot of encouragement by Professor Carlos. I have also been strongly influenced by Scifigal, who recently went to her first comp as a white belt. She had a bad experience... but I admire that she had the gonads to do it, and she will keep doing it, because she feels it's important for women BJJ'ers to represent. She's right. There is still a lot of marginalizing of women in MA, and I expect that will still be true for at least a few more generations. But in the meantime, one could see it as one's *responsibility* to represent. Otherwise things will never change, and you are not really actively doing anything to help them change.

I know it's a fairly safe bet that I'll get my @ss handed to me…. since competition is not really that important in my personal MA world, I think I would be okay with that. But given, I struggle a *LOT* with general poor attitude about my own skills. I guess you can't really know how you'll feel about it till you do it. It does worry me some that getting smooshed at a tournament might affect me more strongly than I think it would. Especially since I am just coming off my Epic Slump 2010… I'm a bit anxious about putting my vulnerable self-esteem on the line like that.

Rodrigo almost always schedules a small "dry run" tournament before each Revolution- that being either an in-house only comp (no fees, no medals), or a small local comp including a select few of the area schools. Probably be a good idea to do that first. I've never even SEEN a BJJ competition.

I am walking around right now at about 10- 15lb over what I consider to be my ideal weight. I am vehemently against crazy weight-cutting for comps- but this is definitely unneeded/unwanted poundage, and I have four months- which is a very reasonable time frame to drop at least 10-12 and get down one bracket. Man, I *hate* dieting. But I really do need to address this, from a pure fitness standpoint, and this deadline might be a useful way to spur myself to get my act together and "Get 'Er Done" (as the Redneck Pagans like to put it).

If I decide to do the Revolution, I *will* register as representing both Gracie Barra Seattle and Sleeper Athletics. That is already decided.


It looks like I will finally get to meet Sue (from the Sub101 forums) this weekend, as she will be in town- unfortunately, things aren't looking great for getting a chance to actually **ROLL**, which is a bummer. Someday.

No comments:

Post a Comment