The girls were no-shows again at the women's self defense class, so I got an entire hour of rolling with Lindsey and with the blue belt guy he brings in with him (forgot the guy's name). Lindsey thinks I'm still leaving too much space, and not keeping my hips down low enough to the mat. Both deficiencies showing up most often when I have side control. I also noticed that I seemed unable to prevent blue belt guy from repeatedly catching half guard from my side control... I need to either keep my leg out of reach or block his legs. I have been having the problem with a couple of other training partners as well.
I think I did fairly well against blue belt guy, considering that he's bigger and stronger and also one stripe ahead of me. I did get on top several times and kept it for a bit. Almost choked him a few times, almost got a kimura on him once. Didn't get subbed.
I did spend a long time in bottom half guard with him in our final roll. He was exclaiming in frustration because he couldn't get out of my half guard for love or money.... (Stephanie had remarked on that yesterday as well). Yeah, you're not getting out of my iron-clad half guard, but it does me no good if I'm stuck under there for the whole match and getting nothing useful done. So I told Lindsey that that is my main project for the next few months.
He suggested the following: I have bottom half guard, and the guy tries to bring his knee up and pass across my thigh. I grab the knee with both hands and hug around the thigh with both arms. Shrimp my butt out to the side, flatten down on that leg and try to stretch it out underneath my body. May be able to go on to take the back from here. Otherwise, the opponent is likely to try to roll toward me to defend my getting hir back. At that point I underhook the thigh and keep that trapped leg trapped, while I pass to side control. I repped it a few times and then it was time to leave, so I need to remember to ask to rep that some more next Sunday. I want to build a small repertoire of things to do from bottom half guard and drill the bejeezus out of them, until I have no excuse for being stuck under there any more.
On to kung fu. We did Leopard Fist a few times (don't forget the hard block before the bong sau... also, stay low during that spin- don't pop up), Snake Versus Five Animals a few times. I was feeling really nervous, because DD was sitting there watching us.
Kiu Two. Since I missed last week, and haven't had a chance to practice, I was blanking really bad. I had to ask people to move around so that I could stand in the middle, and then I requested several more reps.
More work on that sweep. I am "leaving the leg behind", which is DD-speak for failing to have my sweeping leg already in motion and thus in front of my body by the time my hands hit the floor. I am also letting my hips rotate so that they are facing the floor by the time I get around to the back; when the hips should be facing the side the entire time. Otherwise the laws of physics have me essentially trying to pass my leg through a few feet worth of the ground to get the trajectory- and since I am not Kitty Pryde, that's not working so well.
When I had been working on this last year, it had seemed as if I needed to get a ton of torque started in my upper body, and transfer it to my lower half as I hit the floor, otherwise I couldn't get any power into the sweep nor get myself all the way through the 360. Now I'm being told that it "looks like (I'm) working too hard". DD does the sweep and he looks like Baryshnikov. I said, "I can make it PRETTY, like a dance, but it won't have any power in it." So I tried it with pretty dance-like form and was told that that looked closer to correct. There must be a happy medium somewhere.
Even though he looks like Baryshnikov doing the sweep, DD did it against the heavy bag, and the thing was swinging so hard it almost hit the wall. Then he did it on SK, "half speed" and sent him flying. DD makes everything look so easy.
After we'd all worked sweeps till we were sore, we worked on the three-strike knife-hand-iron-needle-backfist combo from the beginning of Leopard Fist. Make the strikes reboundy without sacrificing form or extension, and do it in one extended hissy breath.
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