Taking out the trash

"The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof."
- RICHARD BACH


Saturday: My tongue is about three sizes too big for my mouth today.

I have never really had need of a mouth guard, but yesterday while getting tossed around by those two huge guys, I bit my tongue in several places. Large white belts can be very JARRING.
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Thursday: no-gi followed by "black belt" classes at Bellevue.

No-gi: all spars. I was expecting to get my butt handed to me, since I have done almost zero no-gi since Cindy's school closed, and it has always been a weak area for me anyway. Surprisingly, I was competitive with everybody (expect for Casey, who is too far above my level for me to expect to be competitive with). I forget that since GB Seattle and its affiliates do very few no-gi classes, most of these folks have had less no-gi experience than I have.

Black belt: Butterfly sweep, then "Taking out the trash."

Opponent starts in your butterfly guard, lying on your torso. Bump up and slide horiz forearm under hir head to brace along collarbone. Use free arm to post on floor, and let the knee on that side lie on the mat. Scoot butt back a little. "Windshield-wiper" your forearm under hir armpit and hug around hir back. On the other side, hug hir arm to your chest so s/he can't post, and lie down on your side, lifting opponent's leg with your hooked toe. One s/he is over, you can go to side control, scarf, KOB or front mount.

"The trash": As you attempt this sweep, opponent places sole on mat just before you lie down. You underhook it and hug the leg to your ear, then rock opponent backward towards hir hip. This is counterintuitive, as most sweeps seem to have you aiming to roll hir toward the shoulder- but s/he has a free post up there, so you have to go for the hip. Care must be taken to extricate your foot (and ideally the arm as well) before we settle.

A little positional sparring from butterfly guard. Kelly and I both kinda suck at butterfly guard, although she did manage to accomplish two sweeps to my goose egg.

A couple of spars. I was competitive with Kelly, although I did apologize to her once for using a weight advantage. I determinedly avoided her legendary "bear trap" closed guard, chanting "No-no-no-no-no-no!" every time she tried to pull me into it, which made her laugh. She started doing the same thing when I went for collar chokes. Neither of us got any taps.

I was down to 135.5 Friday morning. Not going to hit my goal of 132 before departure for Illinois, but 134 seems doable and I'll be okay with that. It will give me that much more incentive to not go hog wild at the campground- where I won't have access to a scale (nor to a fridge and microwave, which makes it easier to eat small frequent meals and control portions). I don't want to find that on my return, I have bounced right back up to 139.