Tuesday evening

Tuesday evening BJJ at Gracie's Seattle. I worked the midnight shift last night, and didn't really sleep well enough (or sleep ENOUGH, period) to go to class tonight, much less commute into Seattle during rush-four-hours. But JB wanted to train. I haven't seen her in almost a month, and in January she's leaving town to go to college. Thus I don't want to miss any chance to train with her in the meantime.

Anyhow, my stomach woke me up before JB's text message did. One of the most irritating aspects of my "smaller portions" eating strategy is that it is not unusual for my (already poor) sleep to be aborted early by my unhappy, clenching stomach- which is insistantly growling "FEED ME SEYMOUR!!!"

Unfortunately, I hit a few long lights that delayed me just enough to not reach the Hunt Point exit before 5pm.... and if you hit the Hunt Point exit after 5, it is a 45-min commitment sitting on that ramp before you can even set tire on the highway. So we were late. Very late. I hate coming in late.

Also, the new Seattle site's layout makes it impossible to sidle quietly and unobtrusively in- the front door is two steps from the mat, so you distract the whole class when you come in. We were so late that I had thoughts of idling in the back till drills were over, so as not to distract everyone further- and is it really useful to catch just the last ten minutes of drils? We shucked our shoes and started walking back to the locker room, but Rodrigo was already hollering at us- "Hurry, Keetsune, hurry, JB- Queekly, Queekly!" This caused us to break into a trot!

So we got about 10 min worth of clock choke- starting from sprawling north-south on a turtled opponent. Your left hand to her right collar (deep), move side-by-side. Do not move side-by-side and THEN grab the collar; I got corrected on this point. With your right hand, reach over her back and under her right elbow to control the wrist. Straighten the body and walk on tiptoes back to north-south, putting forehead on the mat. JB and I were both in awe of how many different ways this hurt. We were both gagging and coughing. Ten minutes of this was more than enough. It's a gi-burn night.

Rodrigo came over to help me and JB with the technique- even though it would have been perfectly reasonable to leave us to flail, seeing as how we'd slouched in late. He is really an awesome teacher.

It was amusing to watch Jesse as Rodrigo's demo dummy. Jesse's not usually one to make a lot of faces and noises while he's being worked over, but he was making both tonight- you could tell it hurt!

Short timed matches with JB, Jason (a smallish purple belt that I haven't seen much of), and a big white belt guy. I didn't do very well against any of them. Big white belt guy was repeatedly muscling me into his closed guard, and also did the pick-me-up-and-"sweep"-me-with-no-technique thing. He apparently didn't know any subs (luckily). Jason triangled me and just held me there for about 3 min... he didn't submit me, but I couldn't get out... I'm not sure what the point of that was. Either tap me or let me escape, don't just sit there.

At one point, I was underneath him and he instructed me to let go of his lapel and use that hand to defend. I obeyed- but had another strong visceral reaction of anger, frustration, futility, not wanting to let go of the grip.... feeling like it amounted to "giving up".

Open mat- I rolled a number of times with Angela, who tooled me. I did get on top a bit, but couldn't get any subs from there. Once on the bottom, of course, I was toast.

Another couple with JB. You have to push keylocks about twice as far on her as with any normal person, and kimuras are even more difficult to tap her with. She just has rubber joints. We both observed that sometimes we can hold out till the whitebelts give up... but the higher belts *know* when they've got it, so they keep it up till they get the tap!

(pic- Kaungren)