Back to work

In order to resist [suffering] for a long time, we have to be able to move the mind somewhere else. Beyond the body, beyond the sharp teeth of Pain. We can keep on suffering stoically….. or we can use it to learn to move our consciousness at will. Pain and fatigue exhaust the body until the rational mind, not the least intrigued by all of this, decides to take off and leave us free to explore other states of consciousness. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path

 

Photo: this is from the Grappleton. That's Chris. ;)

Thursday lunchtime at Bellevue. I was so excited to see Chrisanne come in. I haven't seen her in months.

You standing, partner in open guard. You grab hir left ankle with your right hand, place the heel on your hipbone, step your left toe in against hir butt and your rt heel to hir left hip. Bend your knees a bit. Pinch your knees together on hir thigh. Your elbow should be flared.

Now clamp the foot under your arm and let your right knee turn out so that you can drop on it, then onto your back. Do not drop straight back unless you hate your training partner and want to break hir ankle.

If you can't finish the ankle lock, do a technical lift to get to back to standing, while thrusting your arm out to straightarm opponent in the chest to keep hir off you.

It's always exhausting to do reps of a technique that has you getting down and then up, down and then up, down and then up......

Now, same opening, but when you try to finish the ankle lock, opponent hops hir butt over your foot. You respond by keeping that foot clamped under your bicep (I found it really helpful to clench my hand on the ankle/heel), continue the roll in the same direction and end on your knees. your toe should be hooked over opponent's thigh right at the groin. (If you stay choked up really tight on that foot, you really have no choice about that and it's one less thing to have to think about.) This is kind of nasty, so I was really happy to be working with Chrisanne on this, and not with some big spaz (or with Hostility Boy, who was there today... lovely to see you home for the holidays buddy...NOT).

One roll with Chrisanne.
--------------------------------------------

The Thursday no-gi class is gone (I was expecting that to happen). There is now an open mat at 4:30.

The unfortunate thing is that there is a Monkey Bar Gym class and a Boxing class at 5:30, which means that if you want to do open mat and then regular class, you have to either stay for one of those things (and commit to 3+ straight hours of hard exercise) or have an hour to kill.

Today, though, the MBG had not begun yet, and no one else showed up for open mat- so Kelly and I (who had coordinated to meet) ended up having two full hours to roll no-gi. It was great.

I spent a lot of time on the bottom as usual, but I did manage to do a little bit better at keeping her off me in order to play a little more open guard and even try for a few subs and other techniques from guard (a weakness for me).

We gave each other some good feedback, and did a little experimenting (most notably with Del a Riva). We also did a small amount of standup.

I overextended my left elbow. It wasn't Kelly's fault, it was an accident. I was able to continue, but it hurts. I'm irritated that this happened my first day back on the mats from my sprained-toe-benching. I had planned to do two classes tomorrow and one Saturday, so I hope it's going to be functional in the morning. My toe is a little painful but almost fully functional.