Friday

What’s your objective? -Raven


Friday: It's five am. Since last fall, whenever I sleep at night, I wake up like a shot at 5am. Occasionally I can get back to sleep, but usually I can't. It doesn't seem to matter if I went to bed at midnight or 1, it doesn't seem to matter that I'm still exhausted. It's like the world is forcing me to watch the sunrise every morning as some kind of psychological torture. I've read that this is a common grief symptom. I wonder if it's ever going to go away. It's been seven months, it seems like it should be going away. The grief too. This waking-up-at-5-am thing makes it really hard to do classes, especially 2-a-day classes- so tired- and if I have to work the 3pm to midnight shift, that's really hard too. (The number of typos I had to correct in this paragraph is amazing.... it looked like it had been written by someone three sheets to the wind.... bet I missed some, too) If I had taken a Unisom or two the night before, that seems to head it off sometimes, but I'm already taking way too many of those things.


It took me so long to eat my chicken a la king with chopsticks last night, I had to stick it back in the microwave to reheat. Afterward, I was still a bit hungry- but I just didn't want to spend that much time picking at the food again. My characteristic impatience with time-consuming detail work may make this an even better diet aid than I'd thought. I'm not getting any more adept yet with practice. Now I know why the Chinese as a culture tend to not be as overweight as Americans. It's the chopsticks!!!!!

Last night I told Carlos that he was looking skinny today. Then he had to go weigh himself. He's all anxious about his weight because he's getting ready for PanAms (and also the Revolution this Saturday). The scale showed him 4lb over what he thought he was, and then he had to show us all a photo on his phone of his bare feet on the scale at home that morning to prove he wasn't really that heavy. I got on the scale and said, "Oh, this is weighing four pounds heavy!" I told them what I'd weighed that morning, and that the gym scale said I was 4 lb heavier. Carlos felt better then, because he said I could not have gained 4lb that day when I did two classes! Then Dave put the 25lb barbell on the scale,and it said 27lb. I pointed out that the amount of error could increase with a heavier weight on the scale, though.


Lunchtime BJJ at GB Seattle. I walked in and there was Fred! I said, "Look! It's a new guy! What's your name, new guy?!" He has a new job within reasonable distance of the school, so depending on his schedule, hopefully he will be able to start coming regularly again. Unfortunately I didn't get to play with him today. kai was theer too- another person I haven't seen in about a year.

Since it's the day before the Revolution, Carlos will either be 1)really hard on us, or 2)really easy on us. No in-between. It turned out to be option 2 today! By the time warmups were done, I was about done too!

Standing guard pass, the reaching-in-your-jeans-pocket one. Note that to begin (in guard on the floor), you want to get your elbow tucked right in close to your ribs- and if you can get the sleeve-grip hand tucked under your elbow so that the opponent's hand is pinned in there, so much the better. Also do not forget the change of hands when you stand up- you have to change that sleeve grip to the cross-hand. I had to be corrected on that. (Angela was forgetting that too, but this time I elected to keep my yap shut, and I'm glad I did because of what ensued later...)

Once we broke the guard, we were doing the "seatbelt" with gable grip and sprawl. This was the part I was having the most trouble with. Angela suggests that I need to grip further up on the thighs and a lot harder, stack more aggressively, and also not get sloppy with my gable grip.

After the stack, you crossgrip the collar, grab the back of the pants, plant shoulder in ribs and work around to side control.

Next we did the same entry from guard on the floor, only when the opponent stands up in your guard, you go to spider guard. Opponent grips pants (inside or outside is ok- carlos prefers inside), elbows snap sharply in, backs up and slams feet to floor (bullfight). Then plant shouler in ribs and work around to side control.

I have always had trouble shedding people's spider-guard feet, and both Angela and I had trouble with it today. She actually instructed me after the first couple reps to fight harder to hold my spider guard on her. I resisted a bit more, and then she asked again, more insistantly. She's prepping for the Revolution tomorrow and the PanAms as well, so she doesn't want to waste any time with people who are not fighting her hard. Okay, whatever you want, dude. So I started hanging on like a superglued monkey. Since she is a purple belt, she was still shedding me and passing just fine- but not with the Bullfight, and Carlos came over and told her to do the drill he had told us to be working on. She informed him that it wasn't working. So he made her demo it, and it worked. She said, "It only works if Kitsune's not fighting me." "Keetsune's not supposed to be fighting you, thees ees DREELs, not poseetional sparring." So they started arguing about it. I could tell that Angela was really frustrated with that elbows-in maneuver that was supposed to shed the spider guard feet and wasn't working for either of us. After Carlos left, I said to her, "I think part of the problem is that our boobs are in the way." Which made her laugh, but it's true. The technique is similar to certain Wing Chun techniques where my teacher was always harping at me, "Drop the elbows more, get them closer to your ribs." and I would answer "That is not going to happen without surgical intervention."

So Carlos came back after a while and again asked her why she couldn't do the technique, and she responded, "Because I have breasts." If I hadn't been mortified, the expression on Carlos' face probably would have been pretty funny. Then I had to explain to him what she meant.

I left after drills because I was tried, and I wanted to save enough energy to go to Sleeper tonight.

Hey, this month is my three-year BJJ anniversary.


I got Crazy Bread after class. Worth every single calorie.