Welcome to jiu jitsu.

The duelist is interested in winning, in maintaining honor. The professional (criminal) is interested in killing, as quickly and efficiently as possible.  –Rory Miller



Friday evening BJJ in Bellevue.

White belt #1: "How's your knee doing?"

White belt #2: "It's a little better now, but yesterday I wrenched the &#^$ out of my elbow......"

Kitsune: "Welcome to Jiu Jitsu, where you repeatedly acquire a new injury before your previous injury has healed. You will never be healthy again."

To their credit, they seemed psyched by this instead of troubled. Those are the types that might stick it out.

Standup, judo grips. Take your foot on the side that you're gripping the LAPEL (and note that in this technique you want a deep, back-of-the-neck grip), and cross it so that you whack opponent's opposite shin with your instep. Stomp the foot to the floor between hir feet, turn, and jerk partner off balance with the gi grips. You are shoving hir down with the lapel grip and pulling hir toward you with a twist using the sleeve grip. (I love these takedowns that involve twisting the person so that the back of their shoulder is forced toward the floor.) Now kick your heel up (the same active foot that you were using before) and displace the leg. If your jerk was effective, the opponent's weight should be on that leg and s/he should go down as if poleaxed.

If this does not work, follow up by shoving opponent away from you while you use the same active foot to shoot out and inward-hook opponent's OTHER leg.

Ideally you want to have control of that knee as s/he lands on hir back. I had to ask Prof Herbert which grip to release in order to do that. You release the lapel grip and grab for the inside of the knee pantleg grip. I guess it was a good question, as he then chose to build upon the technique thusly:

Now that you have the person on the ground on hir back with one knee between your knees, and you have an elbow grip (on the outside) and a pantleg grip (inside of knee)..... donkey-kick that inside leg out and go to KOB.

Next: opponent turns in to you and pushes on your knee. Now armbar.

Chrisanne and I discovered that doing the takedown on one's stupid side- while not very much more difficult- resulted in the opponent having a MUCH harder time both staying balanced as well as being able to do anything helpful while falling. This would only be true of right-handed people, presumably. But the difference was marked enough that it would be reasonable to make a concerted effort to drill this on the dumb side.

One roll with Chrisanne and one with that flexible blue belt guy (I really need to remember his name....) I got a choke on him that he was very admiring of. Many people have been praising me a lot lately. It doesn't seem to be having any effect at all on my poor self-appraisal.