Wednesday

A man wants to walk across the land, but the earth is covered with thorns. He has two options- one is to pave his road, to tame all of nature into compliance. The other is to make sandals. Making sandals is the internal solution. Like the Soft Zone, it does not base success on a submissive world. - Josh Waitzkin, “The Art Of Learning”



Saturday FOD: Angry Snake Defends Its Lair
Sunday FOD: Wood Monkey
Monday FOD: Kiu Two
Tuesday did not exist due to work/sleep cycle scheduling
Wednesday FOD: Box Form


Wednesday morning, JoE and I worked on some Box Form, Kiu Two, Southern Mantis, and some sparring. (We had planned to meet at Volunteer Park; I texted him and suggested his apartment lobby instead due to the rain and cold. Turns out I had his number entered erroneously in my phone. So I apparently texted some random stranger and suggested we meet at his apartment. Hope it's someone nice.) Anyway, we met at the park and then repaired to the apartment lobby.


New Southern Mantis fragment: After the turn and rising topfist.

Little skip forward- place rt foot where left foot was, left foot steps forward into a Southern Mantis stance (I keep wanting to do a cat here...). The rt hand circles back to chamber after the topfist, but continues without pause into a waist-level front punch as you are skipping forward.

Both hands move to center, then down-and-out in low palm-heel blocks (as in Three Step Arrow).


Reach up with both hands to grab opponent's head, bring it down as you bring rt knee up to smash.

JoE thinks this is one of the most difficult sections in the form just because of the tricky timing of the skip forward and the punch.


We went pretty slow and light with the sparring; he hit me too hard a few times, but it wasn't too bad. His Mantis technique is really difficult for me to parse.... I tend to not do very well against him. He couldn't take me down, though, and he tried a LOT. We did end up rolling around on the ground some at the end, during which he is so much stronger that he just pinned me and hit me till I had to cry uncle.

I'm not sure if that was helpful for me or not at this point. It was nice to be able to work some Kung Fu, and it was nice to see JoE again... I hate to lose contact with all the other students in the group that were not part of the conflict. It did churn up my maudlin again some, though.... my mood is poor this afternoon. I may need to ask him to just not talk about class or people from class, since that's what was kind of hard to deal with.


Wednesday lunchtime BJJ at Gracie Seattle. Standing shoulder lock. Then: Opponent tries to double-leg you, you sprawl, crossface, go to the side (NOT the back), and clock choke. THis worked much better when I remembered to switch my hips once I was cranking back toward the head.... but if you switch your hips too soon, the guy can reverse you, so you have to really watch the balance points.

Then, opponent tried to grab your leg while you're at the side. Switch your feet to trap his arm, then you can try to armbar by lifting your rear leg up (this worked beautifully the first time I tried it; my flexibility played to that very well... then Bryan started turning his arm under so that I couldn't do it any more), or else summersault over the person and finish the clock choke (or another sub) from there.

I got to drill with Bryan, who was helpful with the pointers.

Positional training starting with the opponent on your back. I can defend the choke fine, but I can't remove Bryan's monkey-feet hooks to save my life.

A long roll with Z. I spent a great deal of time trying to choke him, and only succeeded once. He's always fun to roll with, though.


I had every intention of making an evening class today as well, but I'm feeling really physically tired for some reason (even after eating). I have to get up pre-dawn for work in the morning anyway, so I think I'm going to let it slide.


CC is talking again about me teaching him (and D) Hurricane Hands. I just do not feel very good about this... especially now that I don't have SK to check clarifications/questions/apps with.