The world would never have been the same had any of the Western prophets been struck by the same intuition that myth attributes to Bodhidharma. Probably, the entire Western culture would be drastically different. No rivalry between spirit and body. No tug-of-war between the soul yearning for Heaven and the body restraining it on Earth. Rather than wasting our energies quarreling with our bodies and with the natural world, we could let spirituality and sensuality dance cheek to cheek. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path
Lunchtime BJJ at Gracie Bellevue.
After Pat's evil warmups, we took turns running around each other and trying to get KOB while the person on the ground defended enough to make it challenging. Then the same exercise only using front mount instead of KOB.
Then a little playing with X guard. Just going from bottom half guard to the position, then experimenting with the opponent's balance and seeing which ways you could tip hir.
Pat also had us lie on our backs with 1 side against the wall, reach the *outside* foot up the wall and use it to pull our butts to the other side, repeat... it was a neat drill, but exhausting!
Timed sparring- no submissions at first, then with submissions. I had been drilling with Hudge, but he had to bail early for a work meeting- so I got Glenn. Then a white belt guy. Then a large purple belt guy. Purple Belt let me tap him with the straight armbar from "defending the keylock" that Cindy has been drilling this week. She keeps stressing that this is a very low-percentage move, so I wasn't expecting to get it- I was just waiting for the dude to continue to defend by moving his arm back to the keylock position or to the kimura position. So I was a bit taken aback when he tapped, and had to ask, "Was that a tap?" Not meaning to rub it in, or anything! After we were done with the spar, he told me that my "Technique is on pointe!" Which was cool.
I drilled some triangles on the fabric dummy... practicing grabbing my shin and keeping control while I put my foot on the hip, swivel and readjust. My stubby legs and I are so sloppy with that in live sparring. Too much panicked hurrying. If I have it really tight and feel like I'm actually in control, I hope I won't feel the panicked hurrying so much.
Then I went with Glenn again- and he totally mangled me. He kept going for triangles, and I couldn't seem to stop him even after I knew that's what he was going for. I successfully defended a couple of them. He didn't actually finish any of the triangles, but I don't think that was his intent. He kept switching to the armbar and tapping me out with that. He is also one of those people (Bryan is like this too) that you just can't close with at the beginning of the roll no matter what you do. No matter what you grab, or what direction you come from, they won't let you get within arm's length, and they always grab control within about 4 seconds.
A big white belt guy was rolling with (even bigger) Lance- the dude I said was the size of a manufactured home...? After Lance smooshed him, the white belt guy crawled away and looked at me, and said, "I'll bet that's what it feels like for YOU!" I replied, "Every time!"
Pat is urging me to go to Pan Ams. He says that there were only 2 women in Julie's bracket last year, and she got silver even though she lost. While I'm sure I would have quite an exciting blog post to share after facing down THE RED MENACE across the Pan Ams mat (not to mention some mortifying video footage), I told Pat that I would kinda like to place something other than dead last in at least one local tournament before considering the Pan Ams!
I wondered what the wierd noise coming from the washing machine was.... I had tossed my water bottle in there along with my gi and other sweaty BJJ clothes. Well, it's clean now.
Thursday kung fu. Nemesis wasn't there, which was odd. Nemesis almost never misses class.
SK had a million questions about how the Tai Chi lessons are going.
We started with Kiu Two.... several reps of each side (not with partners). SK is nagging me to relax more. He continues to nag me about failing to fully extend my strikes; and when I focus on doing THAT, I seem to get even stiffer.
Then we worked the Wing Chun two-person strike drills. I worked first with SK and then with JM. Same persistant problem with the Bong Sau. I want to hook my elbow all the way over the opponent's arm to trap it- which is a valid technique, but not the point of this particular drill. SK finally broke the bong sau down for me in minuteae. Turns out that the proper technique involves countermanding years of Tai Chi brainwashing involving body turns and not hunching the shoulder. He tried to physically propel my arm through the motion, and apparently my arm/shoulder just doesn't want to move that way. I was quite vexed by this, as I am used to being by far the most physically flexible person in the class in every respect. SK thinks that my deltoids are exceedingly developed, and may be interfering with this particular motion. Grrrr. Well, if this is true, at least that explains why I'm having so much trouble getting it right.
When I drilled with JM, she would occassionally freeze and then grin at me while I continued into the next motion in the drill and ended up parrying nothing. When I tried to slow down enough to let her begin the strike before I moved to counter, I found myself doing a sort of improvised chi sau... letting my parrying hand linger on her arm long enough to 1)feel when/where it tensed to move next, and 2)sort of "pass" it to my opposite hand instead of disengaging and re-engaging.
After that, SK wanted to talk some more as a group about how the sparring on Sunday had gone. I felt a little shanghaied, as this was the same discussion that I had skulked away from at the end of Sunday class.... so the others should have already covered this, and I couldn't duck out this time as it was happening in the middle of class and of course SK will repeatedly prompt me by name if I don't speak up. Sigh. After being so prompted, I said that the scenario drilling that DD tends to get sidetracked off on after three steps of a spar is helpful, and should be done- but it's not good when it eats up the entire time slot and ends up REPLACING the actual sparring. JoE said again that he had liked having two instructors conducting sparring at a time- and I agreed, saying that it was good to have fewer people idly watching. SK then wanted to know how I reconciled that with my argument that *HE* needed to be taking turns because we learned by watching him spar.
Kitsune: "I want to be able to watch other people- I don't want other people to be watching *ME*!"
SK: "They can't learn too?"
Kitsune: "What are they going to learn by watching *ME*? What *NOT* to do??!?"
JM: "I learn a lot by watching you." (She said that emphatically enough that I simply thanked her and shut up.)
SK mentioned later that he had noticed all the shin-checking I'd been doing on DD on Sunday, and that it had been impressive... DD couldn't get close enough to get a decent strike in. I had liked that too- but now I need to focus on following up the shin check with something.
We spent the remainder of the class slo-mo sparring (one designated attacker and one designated defender). People are still tending to speed up too much (in my opinion). There was a little less pressure tonight because we didn't have Nemesis... although JoE has some persistant problems with control as well. JM attacking JoE. Then me attacking JM. She really does seem to have a lot of Dragon in her sparring. She keeps taking my momentum and using it to screw me down to the floor. It's really cool. I want to cultivate that skill. Then SK attacking me (he's definitely manipulating the matchups so that he is always the one attacking me... thank you). Then JoE attacking SK. I had insisted that SK needed to take a turn. It really was very educational to watch and see what we needed to be working toward. Then SK attacking JM. Then we ran out of time.
Whew- sore shoulders tonight. Combo of too much bong sau, and one armbar that Glenn slammed on a bit too hard and fast at the end of our roll.
SK's going to be out of town for a while (sniff), so we will be cancelling next Thurs class and having CN teach the next two Sunday classes.
(Pic- Rodrigo, Rafael De Freitas, and Carlos)
Lunchtime BJJ at Gracie Bellevue.
After Pat's evil warmups, we took turns running around each other and trying to get KOB while the person on the ground defended enough to make it challenging. Then the same exercise only using front mount instead of KOB.
Then a little playing with X guard. Just going from bottom half guard to the position, then experimenting with the opponent's balance and seeing which ways you could tip hir.
Pat also had us lie on our backs with 1 side against the wall, reach the *outside* foot up the wall and use it to pull our butts to the other side, repeat... it was a neat drill, but exhausting!
Timed sparring- no submissions at first, then with submissions. I had been drilling with Hudge, but he had to bail early for a work meeting- so I got Glenn. Then a white belt guy. Then a large purple belt guy. Purple Belt let me tap him with the straight armbar from "defending the keylock" that Cindy has been drilling this week. She keeps stressing that this is a very low-percentage move, so I wasn't expecting to get it- I was just waiting for the dude to continue to defend by moving his arm back to the keylock position or to the kimura position. So I was a bit taken aback when he tapped, and had to ask, "Was that a tap?" Not meaning to rub it in, or anything! After we were done with the spar, he told me that my "Technique is on pointe!" Which was cool.
I drilled some triangles on the fabric dummy... practicing grabbing my shin and keeping control while I put my foot on the hip, swivel and readjust. My stubby legs and I are so sloppy with that in live sparring. Too much panicked hurrying. If I have it really tight and feel like I'm actually in control, I hope I won't feel the panicked hurrying so much.
Then I went with Glenn again- and he totally mangled me. He kept going for triangles, and I couldn't seem to stop him even after I knew that's what he was going for. I successfully defended a couple of them. He didn't actually finish any of the triangles, but I don't think that was his intent. He kept switching to the armbar and tapping me out with that. He is also one of those people (Bryan is like this too) that you just can't close with at the beginning of the roll no matter what you do. No matter what you grab, or what direction you come from, they won't let you get within arm's length, and they always grab control within about 4 seconds.
A big white belt guy was rolling with (even bigger) Lance- the dude I said was the size of a manufactured home...? After Lance smooshed him, the white belt guy crawled away and looked at me, and said, "I'll bet that's what it feels like for YOU!" I replied, "Every time!"
Pat is urging me to go to Pan Ams. He says that there were only 2 women in Julie's bracket last year, and she got silver even though she lost. While I'm sure I would have quite an exciting blog post to share after facing down THE RED MENACE across the Pan Ams mat (not to mention some mortifying video footage), I told Pat that I would kinda like to place something other than dead last in at least one local tournament before considering the Pan Ams!
I wondered what the wierd noise coming from the washing machine was.... I had tossed my water bottle in there along with my gi and other sweaty BJJ clothes. Well, it's clean now.
Thursday kung fu. Nemesis wasn't there, which was odd. Nemesis almost never misses class.
SK had a million questions about how the Tai Chi lessons are going.
We started with Kiu Two.... several reps of each side (not with partners). SK is nagging me to relax more. He continues to nag me about failing to fully extend my strikes; and when I focus on doing THAT, I seem to get even stiffer.
Then we worked the Wing Chun two-person strike drills. I worked first with SK and then with JM. Same persistant problem with the Bong Sau. I want to hook my elbow all the way over the opponent's arm to trap it- which is a valid technique, but not the point of this particular drill. SK finally broke the bong sau down for me in minuteae. Turns out that the proper technique involves countermanding years of Tai Chi brainwashing involving body turns and not hunching the shoulder. He tried to physically propel my arm through the motion, and apparently my arm/shoulder just doesn't want to move that way. I was quite vexed by this, as I am used to being by far the most physically flexible person in the class in every respect. SK thinks that my deltoids are exceedingly developed, and may be interfering with this particular motion. Grrrr. Well, if this is true, at least that explains why I'm having so much trouble getting it right.
When I drilled with JM, she would occassionally freeze and then grin at me while I continued into the next motion in the drill and ended up parrying nothing. When I tried to slow down enough to let her begin the strike before I moved to counter, I found myself doing a sort of improvised chi sau... letting my parrying hand linger on her arm long enough to 1)feel when/where it tensed to move next, and 2)sort of "pass" it to my opposite hand instead of disengaging and re-engaging.
After that, SK wanted to talk some more as a group about how the sparring on Sunday had gone. I felt a little shanghaied, as this was the same discussion that I had skulked away from at the end of Sunday class.... so the others should have already covered this, and I couldn't duck out this time as it was happening in the middle of class and of course SK will repeatedly prompt me by name if I don't speak up. Sigh. After being so prompted, I said that the scenario drilling that DD tends to get sidetracked off on after three steps of a spar is helpful, and should be done- but it's not good when it eats up the entire time slot and ends up REPLACING the actual sparring. JoE said again that he had liked having two instructors conducting sparring at a time- and I agreed, saying that it was good to have fewer people idly watching. SK then wanted to know how I reconciled that with my argument that *HE* needed to be taking turns because we learned by watching him spar.
Kitsune: "I want to be able to watch other people- I don't want other people to be watching *ME*!"
SK: "They can't learn too?"
Kitsune: "What are they going to learn by watching *ME*? What *NOT* to do??!?"
JM: "I learn a lot by watching you." (She said that emphatically enough that I simply thanked her and shut up.)
SK mentioned later that he had noticed all the shin-checking I'd been doing on DD on Sunday, and that it had been impressive... DD couldn't get close enough to get a decent strike in. I had liked that too- but now I need to focus on following up the shin check with something.
We spent the remainder of the class slo-mo sparring (one designated attacker and one designated defender). People are still tending to speed up too much (in my opinion). There was a little less pressure tonight because we didn't have Nemesis... although JoE has some persistant problems with control as well. JM attacking JoE. Then me attacking JM. She really does seem to have a lot of Dragon in her sparring. She keeps taking my momentum and using it to screw me down to the floor. It's really cool. I want to cultivate that skill. Then SK attacking me (he's definitely manipulating the matchups so that he is always the one attacking me... thank you). Then JoE attacking SK. I had insisted that SK needed to take a turn. It really was very educational to watch and see what we needed to be working toward. Then SK attacking JM. Then we ran out of time.
Whew- sore shoulders tonight. Combo of too much bong sau, and one armbar that Glenn slammed on a bit too hard and fast at the end of our roll.
SK's going to be out of town for a while (sniff), so we will be cancelling next Thurs class and having CN teach the next two Sunday classes.
(Pic- Rodrigo, Rafael De Freitas, and Carlos)
Great quotes on this and the last post, I think I'm going to have to read that book.
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