Footsie

128.0

Zounds, after being stuck at 130-ish for several weeks, I just randomly dropped two pounds for no apparant reason. I didn't even work out on Saturday at all. It's probably some fluke, and the 2lb will be back in the morning- but if they stay gone, that's only 4lb over my original goal. It will be tempting in that case to go for broke and try to make 124 for the tournament. That might even get me out of Bianca's bracket (not that that's likely to enable me to avoid her, but you never know).

Sunday evening kung fu. I'm liking this change from Tuesday to Sunday- it results in claiming back an hour per week out of my life that I used to spend staring at the backs of other people's cars. It was also nice to see JB there; as I have not heard a peep from her in a week, and thought she might be dead.

We started with Kiu One. I worked with Nemesis. I added in the circling. It was throwing him off a bit, but he got the hang. When SK saw us rotating, he told the others to try rotating as well. They were confuddled about which direction to go, and whether or not to switch directions on each rep. It seemed very obvious to me. I really do have a good instinct for this style.

Then we started working on Kiu Two. Now with JM. We did a whole bunch of reps of each part side by side, just to get back in the groove, before working it together. She pointed out that I was sometimes cheating the scissor step. When I tried to pay attention to my scissor step, I started getting the arm motions all snarfed up. I really can only pay attention to the top half or the bottom half at once- not both!

SK wants us to shorten our steps so that we remain bridged at the end of this first section. Since we both end that section in right cat stance, I began to make a point of ending with 1)my Snake hand perched on TOP of JM's, and 2)my forward foot resting on top of her forward foot. After a couple reps of this, she asked if I was deliberately playing footsie with her. No, I said, I just want to be on top. So the following rep had us stomping and whacking at each other at the end, each of us trying to get our Snake hands and cat feet on top. To heck with this- I darted in for a choke, she tried (and failed) to hip throw me, and next thing we're rolling around on the floor. I don't know how things degenerate to this level, I really don't. (There really isn't room in JoE's apartment rec room for BJJ... SK broke it up pretty quickly by tickling us both.)

We got a little bit more of the form. I practiced this section with JB.

Snake A: Bridge opponent's wrist, right kick to knee with outside side of foot. Snake B chambers the leg, then returns a similar kick (to supporting leg if you can reach it). Snake A places kicking foot back down (knee turned slightly out to jam opponent's leg); inside crescent kick with other leg, spin 360, end in Snake guard (rt cat stance). Snake B gets hir kicking leg hooked by the crescent, and also spins 360, end in Snake guard (LEFT cat stance). Note: Snake A, when you place the foot back down after the first kick, turn the toe way out. Otherwise the spin is grotesquely off balance.

DD had appeared for the second half of the class. I asked him and SK to demo the whole form for us, since I haven't seen it in at least two years. He refused.


From the Side Control blog today, re: the November Revolution:

"This year, for the first time in any local jiu jitsu tournament, Leap LLC will be offering a Masters division for competitors over 30. It will be interesting to see how those divisions fill out across the different belt levels. I can imagine some decent brackets at white and blue belt, at least."

Yet another page in the book of "Must be nice to be a male in BJJ".