"Touch" his head

In martial arts, everything begins with the body. First, one gets acquainted with it, and slowly becomes intimate with it. The body is transformed into the best ally of the spirit. Then spirit and body become one. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path


Friday evening no-gi at Sleeper.

Again, didn't have time for the pre-class egg- and I was seriously dragging butt by the end. I'm not sure if I would have been any better with the egg, though- it might have been the inevitable result of 4 classes in 2 days, with poor sleep.

I had to skip the double-leg-pose warmup lap down the mat, as my knees were pretty sore by now. The lunges hurt too; I did them, but not very cleanly.

As everyone was pairing up for drills, Jalen and two newer guys and I were all left there darting uncomfortable glances at one another- so finally I just crooked my finger at Jalen and pointed to the mat in front of me. I hope he doesn't mind working with me. I always like working with him- we are efficient at knocking out drill reps, and getting to a good point of knowing exactly when and how much resistance to give each other.

Breaking guard and backing out- keep the front knee up and elbow on knee to make a wall, torso turned to the side so that you are too wide for opponent to easily reclose guard. Grab opponent's ankles. Transfer one foot to your other hand so that it's a cross grip, and quickly step to opponent's ribs with your near foot. Take KOB, mount, side control or (if they try to roll away) the back.

Same guard break and back out. Grab opponent's ankles. push them to hir chest. If s/he pushes back, shove them to the floor and leapfrog over them directly to mount. (Cindy does this to me all the time, and it still makes me nearly pee myself to see her suddenly hurtling toward my face like that at about mach eight.)

If opponent is wise to Cindy's little trick and refuses to push back, continue to press forward till hir knees are sitting on hir face and you are sitting on the backs of hir thighs. Put one hand to the mat under hir arm, then "breakdance" your hips in a half-circle over hir head- turning belly-down at the end. You are now in top side control.

You standing, opponent in "butt scoot position" with one knee up and elbow on knee. You grab that wrist, quickly step to the outside with the leg on that same side, and step OVER hir shoulder with the other leg. Bear hir down, preferrably without being a douche and smashing hir ribs, as you are now in mounted triangle. (This is another rather pee-inducing situation to find yourself in as far as the "hurtling-toward-your-face" aspect.) Finish the triangle, or apply any of legion arm submissions.

"Seat belt" guard pass, again. We did some part of the ending a little differently that I'd done it at Gracie's this morning, but at the moment I'll be damned if I can remember what. I'm literally reeling with exhaustion right now, and my brain is freezing up.

Cindy was demo'ing a variation on ending the "breakdance" thing, and at one point she said, "... now touch his face..." while grabbing the side of the guy's head, twisting it upward and straight-arm mashing it to the mat. I started cracking up, and she stopped and asked me what was so funny. I said, "I like your definition of "touch""- and I mimed what she had just done, with appropriate sound effects. This is just a really gleeful thing about Cindy's classes- unless of course you're the unfortunate demo dummy. (It has now become my custom to accompany any request for Cindy to do an additional demo with an apology to Jalen, who is her usual victim these days)

I was inadvertantly being a less-than-optimal training partner for a few of these techniques, due to my obsessive protecting of my ribs with what Cindy calls "Little T-Rex arms". It was not allowing Jalen to get some of the underhooks he needed. We were doing some potentially rib-smashing techniques, and while Jalen is a good partner, I am very protective of my ribs because they have been injured too often and put me on the bench for way too long. I apologized to Jalen and said that I wasn't trying to be uncooperative, I was just old and fragile.

One roll with Jalen. Fun and competitive as always.

One roll with Jorge. Always fun to get pwn'ed by Jorge.

I did one round of the "balancing/sweep" exercise with Cindy. She wants me to work for more toe-hooks under the legs. Also, no more collapsing under people with my knees pinned together and shoved to the side. For some reason I tend to want to do this, with my knees drawn up to the chest in the fetal position. No win here. More butterfly legs instead of that. One thing I did RIGHT tonight was to remember (not always, but more often) to retain the arm or leg while I'm trying to sweep. Often I want to throw them away- I guess I subconsciously want to free up my hands for defense- which serves only to rob me of leverage and allow the opponent extra things to post with so that s/he can resist my sweep.

I didn't get to work with the new girl, Erin. Hope to get a chance next time.