Frolicking is good

Thursday lunchtime no-gi at Cindy's. TIIIIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRED. And sore. Tired enough that I probably would have skipped class and gone back to bed if not for the fact that I know I won't be able to go back to Cindy's till next Thursday due to work commitments.

Another long warmup. Lamont's dead bugs are much better today.

Scarf escape drills again. Review of both side control escapes. A new variation wherein you grab the distal foot instead of the knee to drive in. We also practiced how to react if the opponent tries to sit out and replace full guard while you're escaping. My stumpy legs made it easy for me to sit out and replace full guard before Eric knew what was happening.

Then a lot of positional training from side control. One thing I will say for a defeatist attitude is that it's making it easier for me to abandon those fruitless grips I tend to cling to. Today, as soon as I realized a grip was fruitless, it was like, "Okay, screw that." Give up, let go, let the guy smoosh me flat into side control or whatever. It would be blackly amusing if my "Do I really give a crap" BJJ turned out to be more effective than my "I would cheerfully gnaw my own arm off at the shoulder if it would get me out of this guy's scarf hold" BJJ.

Lamont asked me if I am aware of when I've nullified a threat. Apparently, I wrapped up one of his legs and stretched it out to stop him from doing XYZ, and succeeded in preventing the attack (according to him).... but then I just continued to cling to the leg. That's a good point. No, I'm not really aware of when a threat is nullified well enough to move on. That's part of why I cling- I'm afraid that as soon as I let go, the guy is going to finish the attack he'd started.

Eric and I agreed on our perfect holiday gift: a remote control that will allow you to PAUSE a roll so that you can think about what to do next.



Later...........

Kung fu. We had a shortie class, because my carpool driver elected to take 520 straight from Bellevue, and we got stuck in gridlock and were very late.

SK had asked me if I was up for doing more of what we'd done last week, and I said that if I had my way, I'd like to hold off another week... but that if he wanted us to do it, I would do it- no biggie. The bruises are pretty much gone, but my forearms are still painful to the touch. He said he'd try to not put me with Nemesis again.

Well, it was just SK, JM, Nemesis and me.... and JM whimped out of the forearm-smashing before too long. Since SK is out of the running (rigid plastic wrist splint), well, there I was facing down Nemesis again. I asked him if he'd had any bruising at all from last week. Nope. Of course not.

We did just the Wing Chun drill, not the Hung Gar one. Ow. After a review on the sequence, I was able to focus a bit more on the rebounding energy... but there are still a few too many brain cells focussed on "what comes next?" to put as much attention on the energy as I'd like.

Then a little chi gek ("sticky leg")- Nemesis still has an injured knee, so we could only do one side (although we did both directions). SK wanted us to balance by ourselves, but we had to start out holding each other by one arm till we got in the groove. Nemesis' legs are so much longer than mine that the ranges were difficult. This is quite a challenging workout, as well as a balance drill. My hip was aching very quickly. Nemesis only felt it in his ankle.


Then we went over Sil Lum Dao.

Notes: after the hands-behind-the-back groin strike, the circle forward to the press block is not a wide circle. It only has to be big enough to get your arms around. Nor do the arms float up much.

Do not bounce up on the toes during the high strikes. (Sigh- I got zinged for this again)

The second set of palm strikes are the only ones that are fingers-up.

The last set- the first strike (left hand) is a sideways hand, thumb up. There are only two more strikes after this, not three- the Snakey curving ones.


Watching someone in a rigid plastic wrist brace trying to do Sil Lum Dao is funny. If you are not familiar with the form- the principle characteristic is exaggeratedly-rotating wrists. It wasn't even the truncation that was so funny, it was the exasperated facial expressions (and sometimes, small splutters of vexation) he was making every time his right hand came forward and he realized anew that this was just not going to work.


Individual forms time. I went over Kiu Two, both sides. I don't want to get too cocky, but I think I finally have the sweep in my back pocket. It still wants a bit of polishing, but I can do it now- and it looks like a sweep instead of like a crippled flamingo having an epileptic seizure. Knees are killing me, so I couldn't do too many reps. But I want to make sure to practice it at least a bit each day until Sunday- and ICE MY KNEES before Sunday class- so that I can whip out a few nice ones and make SK proud!

Then I did some reps of Frolic Of the Five Animals. I had been running through this form in my head while I was lying in bed last night, and blanking on the middle portion. Well, the middle portion went fine tonight, but I stumbled over the ending. I pieced it back together after a few reps, though. I couldn't do the spinning flying Crane kick- knees on fire- but aside from that, Dayum- this form looked GOOD. It has undergone an Unexplained Evolutionary Shift (UES). It looked almost good enough to video. Almost. (Grin)


(pic- Renzo and Dave (with his old purple belt on). Dave writes the SIDE CONTROL blog- yep, folks, this is he in the flesh. And you can't even tell him that I totally outed him- because his blog is not comment-enabled. Hee hee!)