Thursday morning no-gi at Cindy's. Frank is back! He's been out for more than a month with an injury.
More bottom-half-guard escape. I wasn't doing quite as well today as I did yesterday; my focus just wasn't there for some reason. It was good to get some reps on Frank, though- he's a big guy and a vastly different body type to practice on.
Relay sparring. I wasn't having a particularly good day with this, either. Cindy was whizzering my arm and then sweeping me, dumping me on my back without letting go of the whizzer- and the first time she did it, my shoulder made a dramatic popping sound. It scared Cindy pretty bad; she thought she'd broken my shoulder! But it didn't hurt at all.
Note to self- don't let her get that whizzer. But if she does, make sure you hold her foot down so that she can't sweep with it. For some reason I kept thinking that if I moved over to the side, everything was going to be fine- and it never was.
Later................
Thursday evening kung fu.... It was just SK, Nemesis, and me. SK said that DD was going to show up later, but he never did (color me surprised....not).
The University of Washington classroom that we are using is not the greatest environment. Besides the tile floor, there is the STATE of the floor. Apparently there are no janitors. The garbage appears to be collected once in a while, but the rooms get cleaned ONLY between semesters. Yes, that's right- there is an entire semester's worth of dirt, food, spilled soda, papers, styrofoam coffee cups, broken pencils, and other detritus on the floor. It's disgusting. Before class, I have to crawl around and try to pick up all the sharp staples, paperclips, and other dangerous hazards. The soles of my feet are BLACK by the end of class.
What money the college is saving by not hiring janitors, it is apparently channeling into heating the building to a temperature just shy of SAUNA. I don't know how anyone can stay awake through an hour's worth of lecture in these rooms. And we're WORKING OUT in them.
It was a rather intense class tonight, full of things I'm really bad at- namely, memorizing sequences. Luckily, the focus that I was having trouble finding this morning came back to me for tonight, and I was able to keep up. I felt like my brain was going to implode by the end, though.
We started out by doing short timed periods of striking the pad- trying to keep up a steady flow. Arms and legs, then just legs, then just arms. Holding the pad for Nemesis is always a teeth-gritting experience. He didn't knock me down, although he did kick an audible grunt out of me once.
Then the sequences....
First, a two-person Hung Gar style strike/block exercise.
1-Right arm- ridge hand inward at waist level. (contact thumb side of forearm)
2-Continue circle till palm is in front of nose. (contact thumb side of forearm)
3-Retrace the circle back down (contact little-finger side of forearm)
4-Continue THAT circle around till your palm is in front of nose again- this that one involves turning the hand in a Crane-like fashion as you make the upward arc (contact little-finger side of forearm)
5-willow palm to opponent's face
Repeat with left arm.
After we'd done this about a zillion times as a line drill, Nemesis and I did it on each other. Mama Mia. Among the many attributes that make Nemesis *NEMESIS* are 1)he hits really hard, and 2)he is a BONY mofo. It was like being beaten with a couple of iron bars.
Next up- a two-person Wing Chun attack and defense drill.
Part A:
Right palm-heel to solar plex
Left straight punch to chest
Right uppercut to belly
Left punch to nose (only with the thumb side pointing up this time)
Trying to keep all four strikes flowing in an even tempo, with the chamber of each powering the next strike and the energy bouncing back to recycle all the way through the sequence.
Part B:
Left Midgate bon sau
Ton sau
press block down
Crane's neck straight up to forehead level
Again, trying to get the timing and energy flowing flast and smooth.
Then both parts mirrored (ie, start part A with LEFT palm-heel, etc).
After a jillion reps of that one, Nemesis and I each took one part and did them on each other- all four ways. I had to ask him to lighten up, more than once, especially towards the end.
When we were finished with these two exercises, I doused both my forearms in Jow. It'll be interesting to see what they look like in the morning. I hope they will be functional for lunchtime BJJ at Gracie's.
The final 30 min of Thursday class is for individual forms practice. Nemesis wanted SK to teach him the last little piece of Kiu Two, which he's missed on Sunday due to being absent with his injured knee. I figured I could use more practice on that myself, so I joined them.
Notes to self-
After the sweep and the block-up, block-down: That first Snake strike, don't chamber the left hand. Have it out front like a regular Snake guard. Also, I'm still not extending my Snake strikes far enough.
I'm still wanting to put too much upper-body movement into the whole holding-the-ball part.
The axe hand is actually moving to the SIDE (towards the midpoint of the body), not as much downward as I have been doing it.
SK is off work for three weeks- the doc doesn't want him to lift heavy stuff with his broken wrist. He's bored out of his gourd already. He was whining tonight that he can't even play video games. He offered to get together and practice sometime during the weekdays. Yowza! That would be great. In fact, that might be just what I need right now to kick-start my kung fu again. The only thing that makes this less than perfect is that we can't spar. (sigh) But I'll take it.
We talked a bit about some of the things I discussed with RS, and what we might do to improve the class. He agrees heartily with the assessment that he is "up to his ass in alligators". I suggested that I might possibly try e-mailing RS, and see if he would be willing to talk to SK and maybe give him some advice and support. SK greeted the idea with enthusiastic relief. That would be great, if that worked out.
(pic- Renzo and Julie)
No comments:
Post a Comment