Ten seconds!! Ten seconds!!

If he or she has the right mindset, the killer will beat the fighter almost every time.   –Rory Miller



137

Yes, even though it seems as if competition is not helping my jiu jitsu right now, it is true that those rigid dates with the tournament scale are good for diet discipline. As soon as I decided to take a break from competing, I promptly gained 5lb. So I decided on a new tactic: my tattoo artist (who, incidentally, just won second place for "best sleeve" at the Seattle Tattoo Expo) has been posting all sorts of rad pics of his work and making me salivate more and more for additional ink. I had told myself that I was going to get my back started the next time I had a benching-level injury, but now I'm thinking that I'm going to use the tat as a carrot (double meaning definitely intended) to get back down to weight. I'm feeling reasonably strong about it at the moment- for the last two days I have not only cut my soda intake by more than half (this is actually the hardest part for me!), I have stocked up on the eggs and carrots, as well as decreasing my portions of everything else and just generally trying to wait a little longer before bowing to hunger and eating something. Even yesterday when I went to the Chinese restaurant with CK (AGAIN!!!!), I ate all the carrots and broccoli on my plate (although I am not fond of cooked veggies) and took half the chicken teriyaki home (it made TWO subsequent diet-sized meals). Yes, rice happened, and I know rice is very bad for me, but I'm still satisfied about the way I handled that. I'm going to take a humongo bag of carrots to work during my next rotation. Work is a dangerous time for the munchies (and the pop).

Friday evening BJJ in Bellevue. There were only 4 of us there, besides the prof. The five of us were in full agreement that BJJ is MUCH MUCH more important than a Seahawks game. I don't know what is wrong with those people.

At first it looked like I was going to get paired up with Lance, which is pretty funny... because even at my fattest, he makes about eight of me. I ended up with (white belt) Shawn.

You have closed guard. Yank opponent's opposite-side sleeve cuff while pulling hir down with your legs. Hug around hir shoulder with your free arm. Now that you have hir arm pinned between your bodies, you can let go of the sleeve and use that arm to reach under hir thigh. Note that your arm should go OVER TOP of hirs. Twist your body into an X formation opposite your opponent's. (Prof Herbert was using a foot on the hip to help it along; that didn't seem to be working very well for me). Swing your far leg to help sweep your opponent. It is good to keep your near knee pasted to the back of hir shoulder blade as you swing up on top; as well as keeping that front heel pasted to hir chest- this keeps hir pinned on hir side and you find yourself in S mount (I love S mount). At this juncture you may appreciate why you wanted your arm to go over top of hirs- as you now have that arm pinned along your body and under your armpit.  I elected to then step over Shawn's face and finish the armbar. Herbert was delighted to see me go there, to the point of having me demo the sequence on HIM for the next drilling section (whee!!).

Next: same entry, only now you focus on the fact that as you place your arm over top of opponent's while reaching for the thigh, you are actually in a rather pleasant position should you choose to bring your other leg over hir face and do an armbar right there. I am always thrilled to drill armbars from guard (or permutations thereof), as I keep thinking these are going to be ideal for my game, yet I continue to fail to integrate them into my live sparring. I have a feeling that if I can ever get that switch flipped and start remembering them under pressure, I'm going to be cracking elbows merrily left and right all day long.

As usual, my technical issue to work on (as pointed out by Herbert) is that I should really try to get my second leg higher up into the opponent's armpit. With effort, I was able to improve this on one side, but not the other (it seems that my hip is more flexible on one side).

Finishing with a 10-min spar with Shawn. He's a  good partner; not too big, pretty careful, muscles a bit (hey, he's a white belt) but not too much. I was inspired by the fact that the prof was circling around us watching the whole thing, and I was on top quite a bit, although I started to get really tired in the last few minutes and ended up getting tapped. As Shawn let me up, Herbert said, "Ten seconds left," and I threw myself at Shawn, shrieking, "Ten seconds!! Ten seconds!!" as I jumped guard and started frantically hauling on his lapels trying to get a choke. Didn't get one. But it was a fun spar.