More back mount

“I have many skills.” –Xena, the Warrior Princess




Wednesday evening fundamentals, GB Bothell.

1)Bad guy is front mounted on you, punching you in the face. You do Black Crane cover, hip up and use knee to make Bad Guy post on the mat over your head. Overhook one arm, pinch it in tight, trap the leg on the same side, Upa.

I was the demo dummy tonight, and I made an obvious show of turning my hand over before getting upa'ed. To my delight, one of the white belts noticed and pointed it out. Insights Training, where I first learned an upa, made a big deal of this. I haven't seen this detail given much attention at GB, but I think it should be.

2)You are in turtle, opponent far back hanging on your butt. You turn slightly to get an angle, Grab hir pantleg, stick your opposite leg out to post.  Sit through, replace full guard.

3)Opponent is back mounted on you, double-under lapel grips. The s/he puts one arm over your shoulder for the choke.
You pull down on the elbow and roll to the side hir arm ISN'T on. Remove 1 hook, lie on hir leg. S/he starts to swing the other leg over for from mount. Grab the leg, stuff it between your own legs for half guard. Turn on your side, push hir other knee back, replace full guard.

Drills. So nice to work with Will. I miss Jalen, but Will is the same way about whipping those reps out and being really focussed.

Positional training from back mount. I had asked Cindy about this before class. She suggests that I try to keep moving around- if the opponent rolls to one side, keep the hooks and lapel grips and try to roll hir back. If s/he removes one of my hooks, s/he has to let go of it at some point- and I can try to get it back in. In the meantime, I can post off it and try to roll us around some more. I was still not doing very well during the positional training... I need more practice.

Spars. Tomoe Nage does not work on Will- dammit. I like to make them fly across the room once before they catch onto me. Will knows better than to push into me while we're standing- and if I try to yank him forcibly into the tomoe nage, he drops to his knees and goes into my guard. 

I got stuck in bottom half guard (yeah, what else is new). After a long time, he got really frustrated and stopped to ask me how the heck to get out. So I showed him one trick, and Cindy showed him a different one.  So, that is probably the last time I get to work *THAT* game on him. Also- he tried mightily to clock choke me, and was sooooooooooooo close, but I held out. After the clock ran out, I told him that if he'd grabbed my pants and pulled just a little, I would've had to tap.

I did not spar with Eric tonight, but I worked with a new (to me) large white belt, and James (whom I've worked with before). James got my KOB 101 tonight. We'll see if he remembers it next week. I got one sub on him- baseball bat (without gi- gable grip).  

After class, Cindy had Will work some bottom half guard sweeps using me as a dummy.

We didn't get time to clean the mat before another class came in. The Bothell school shares space with a Kempo school. They were doing single short stick! I wanna learn! Unfortunately, what these folks were doing was an exercise similar to what I've seen the kickboxing class doing: combos according to strings of numbers called out by the teacher. That is exactly the sort of thing that my brain does not compute. I would get #1 and #2, and after that it would be all over.

I made Eric do a triple-take tonight when he found out how old I am.

I am wearing a beard of aloe gel tonight. The entire lower half of my face is peeling off from gi burn.