Blue

Players tend to get attached to fancy techniques and fail to recognize that subtle internalization and refinement is much more important than the quantity of what is learned…. Depth beats breadth any day of the week, because it opens a channel for the intangible, unconscious, creative components of our hidden potential. - Josh Waitzkin, “The Art Of Learning”




Lunchtime BJJ at Gracie Seattle. Kind of a small class today. Carlos (Not Professor Carlos or little Carlos, but the OTHER Carlos) has been blue belted.

On my way in, I had my back cracked again. All of my symptoms (at rest) are down to a "2", even the right arm numbness.

Warmups. Carlos has new pushups- after each one, you place one hand over your ear... alternating. I can do them, but slow- they hurt a bit on the right side.

Bullfight guard pass. Carlos watched me do one, then stopped the whole class and had me demo it on him. He grabbed my ankles and dumped me on my butt. Okay, I see. Need to get the feet back further.

Also, perpetual things I need to work on with this- grab below the knees, not above. Make sure the arms are straight and drive the opponent's legs forcefully to the floor. Don't swing too wide on the way around.

Then a similar pass where instead of grabbing the pantlegs, you use a crossover motion to slap the knee to one side and slide in for a KOB. I had **SO** much trouble with this. It was another left/right "I can't remember which hand to use first" situation. Carlos came over and was walking me through it, and both the guys I was drilling with (we were in a threesome) were trying to direct me as well, and the more I messed it up, the more I freaked out. I would try it on the right, Carlos would go, "No, no- other hand first" So I'd mentally fix that OTHER hand foremost in my brain and go to try it again, and he'd say, "Other side, other side!" So I'd try to do it on the left side and get the wrong hand again, because I was focussed on what I needed to do for the RIGHT side. He is really insistant that you alternate sides during drills, which just ties my brain in knots when I can't even do the technique correctly on ONE side. We did this for what seemed like an eon, with me getting more and more frustrated and embarrassed, and of course the more distressed I got, the worse I performed.

Carlos did not seem to be in a better mood today than he was last night; and he was picking on me and pressuring me kind of rough today. Besides putting me through the ringer on that pass and using me for a what-not-to-do-demo on the Bullfight, he also gave me more grief about how- if I am able to do some positional sparring and live rolling- I ought to be able to do those alligators. It's like he feels I'm challenging his expertise on what can and cannot be done on a popped rib.... I'm as perplexed as he is that I can shrimp and be (moderately) KOB'ed and even do some sprawls at this point, but the alligators still really hurt. It doesn't make sense, but them's the facts. I certainly don't want to challenge his expertise, but I also don't like feeling as if he won't take my word for what hurts too much to do or not- it's almost as if he's accusing me of exaggerating my pain in order to shirk warmups that I don't like, and I don't appreciate that at all. Every "rib out" injury is not equal; as this one has proven, they manifest in different ways. No matter how many times you've had a rib out, you can't definitively tell somebody else that you are understanding their own injury experience better than they are.

I told Carlos that us old folk don't bounce back as quickly as he did (He brags about being back on the mat at almost normal capacity a mere two weeks after that bad rib injury of his). He then wanted to know how old I was, and I told him I turn 39 tomorrow. He was astonished (Yeah, I get that a lot), and then I got to hear about his mom- who is 11 years older than me, a Judo black belt who gets up and runs ten miles every morning. Later on, Bryan made some disparaging remark about me being 39, and I reminded him firmly that I am not 39 until tomorrow. He informed me that he was rounding up.

So, a little KOB positional training, then a live roll with Bryan and one with a white belt guy whose name I forget. They were both nice to my rib. Bryan steamrollered me as usual, but praised my choke defense. He wristlocked me on the right, then casually rolled us 360 degrees, put me into the same position on the opposite side, and wristlocked me on the left. I called him a vulgar name.

The other guy, I was on the bottom most of the time. He couldn't get out of my half guard, and because I was being a little conservative with the core movements, I wasn't trying too strenuously to get out. A couple of times, he rolled us over and essentially reversed himself. Once after he did that, he sort of laughed and said, "I was getting tired of being on top." Ha ha. That would have been the perfect moment to choke the shit out of him, and I tried... got pretty close a number of times, but didn't manage to finish him. Dang.




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

Evening no-gi at Cindy's. Some of the warmups hurt- army crawls, bear crawls, cartwheels, plank walks- but I was able to get through them, albeit slowly.

I noticed a list of techniques written on a whiteboard leaning against the wall. On the opposite side of the board was written, "Be nice to your partner!!!!" I turned away chuckling at that, and Cindy saw me, and called, "I put that on there just for you!"

Positional flow drill. Then taking turns reversing each other from scarf hold. Positonal sparring from scarf hold and then from headlock. Then a little live rolling. With Leilani, Kristal, Daniel and Alecia. Everybody was mostly nice to my rib.

I actually got a pendulum sweep on Daniel. I don't know which of us was more surprised. We both started laughing.

I was in bottom half guard almost the whole time with Daniel and Alecia. Alecia eventually took my back and got me in a body triangle. It wasn't on my injured ribs, or I would have had to tap immediately. As it was, that's one of those things that I do not like to tap to. If they're choking me and/or bow-and-arrowing my spine at the same time, I have no choice but to tap- but she was just squeezing, and I do not tap to torso-squeezing because I feel it is a bit of a cheesy move.

Well, she had it on good and tight, and sistah has some seriously muscular thighs. I could barely get small sips of air in- and yeah, it hurt. I couldn't get out, but I had ahold of her wrist so that she couldn't choke me. I thought I would have to wait till she changed position and then make my break. I became very still, and focussed on trying to moderate my micro-breathing.

Well, the minutes ticked by, and we just lay there....until it became apparent that she was planning to just keep squeezing me and wait me out. I would have been willing to play her waiting game, except that she had access to oxygen while we waited, and I didn't... and I didn't know how much time was left on the clock. Furthermore, she was squeezing me so hard that I could literally taste lunch trying to make an encore appearance in the back of my throat. It was only a matter of time- and not much- before I had to either tap, puke, or lose consciousness, and I didn't really like any of those choices. So I death-gripped her shoulder to the mat, held my breath, did my best to close my throat, and started slowly, laboriously inching my way through a body twist until our position had shifted from her on my back to me in her closed guard. I was so proud of myself. I glanced up, and the mirror wall was right in front of my face. My lips matched the royal blue nylon straps of my headgear.

I exclaimed to Alecia, "OmiGod! Look how blue my lips are!" She did not seem amused. I don't think she was very happy with my escape (if you can even call it that; as I was in her closed guard). So I yelled across the mat to Leilani, who was on the bench- "Hey! Look how blue my lips are!!" She stared, and her eyes got big and round. Yeah, that's more the reaction I was fishing for. It would have been fun to follow up my near-death experience by passing Alecia's guard, but time ran out just then.

Alecia also tapped me out once with a leglock. I continue to get very irritated at being tapped with those. Sigh.




STOMP is holding auditions. SSSSSSSSSSIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH. I could *SO* do that. If only I wasn't so slow to learn/memorize choreography. That would be the most fun *ever*.