"I'm gonna make you TIRED today!"

Thursday morning BJJ at Cindy's..... Lamont took the day off because his neck hurts, and Frank is going to be on the bench for a while yet because of his injured shoulder. So I got Cindy all to myself today! She said, "I'm gonna make you TIRED today." Uh oh.....

Warmups.... I did the "dead bug" excercises; I wonder if these will ever get any easier. Armbar drill- I start out okay on this one, but I get sore and exhausted REALLY fast, and then the form starts getting sloppy. I'm trying to not be lazy about getting the hips up and the getting the lower leg in the armpit instead of sitting on the hip. We've been doing a lot of abs/core exercises lately- I hope it's making me stronger. More flow drill. Adding some Knee-On-Belly: mount with toes on the insides of the opponent's thighs, transition to KOB, to side control; wash, rinse, repeat. I feel like an evil brute putting my weight on the KOB. I kept doing a little bounce during the transitions so that the knee wouldn't grind in so much. I don't know if I'm going to feel okay doing this to people full-on (except maybe Hostility Boy... I think I would do it to him!). I need to remember to not crouch low over the opponent when I have KOB, because they just hug me and roll, and now I'm on the bottom.

Then we just rolled... for a really long time. Ever roll with someone who pins you down and leisurely reties her gi pants at the same time? She did give me a triangle escape, so I must have done it okay. On the whole, I didn't feel any more competant... but I did keep moving, keep trying, keep fighting- even when I was hurting and even when there didn't seem to be any way out and even when I was so tired I didn't even have the energy to beg for mercy.

Cindy kept her promise, she made me tired today. When I got home, it took me two tries to put the gearshift in park.

I tried one of my new earguards today- "Brute" brand. I'll have to wear them a few more times, but so far they seem perhaps slightly less comfortable than my original pair. They do rub on the ears a bit- hopefully not enough to produce hematomas, especially if I am switching back and forth between earguards. They are harder to hear through... I kept having to ask Cindy to repeat herself. And can anyone make a chin strap that doesn't feel like it's strangling you to death??!

The third pair of earguards- a different model of Cliff Keens- I haven't tried them yet because I can't figure out how to adjust the straps. I'll need to get somebody to help me with that. I have the "hair slicker" too, haven't tested it out yet. Lamont was posting on my hair yesterday, so it should be getting long enough to be ripped out again soon!



SK has injured his back, so kung fu class is cancelled tonight. With DD and CN mostly out of the picture, when SK is down for the count that leaves us with no backup teacher, which sucks. I should have gone to Gracie's... I wanted to go to Gracies.... but for the second night in a row, I assessed my corporeal self and decided that the body was not up to it. I could have done kung fu tonight... not because it's EASIER, by any means, but it's a different workout which works (at least in part) different muscles in different ways. One thing that holds true for both 1)Gracie's in the two weeks before the Revolution, and 2)Cindy's when you happen to catch a small-sized and thus more personalized and targeted class, is that there ain't gonna be no coasting through a "light one". Don't even bother to show up unless you're ready and willing to throw down and bust ass. It's been great getting privates and semi-privates at Cindy's lately, but it does wipe a person out... one two-hour class and my body wants to be done with hard exercise for the rest of the day. It's not like a larger class where there are just more breaks built in due to trying to organize a lot of people.