Thursday

The martial arts are one of the methods that can teach the body to reawaken the sleepy senses. Those smart enough not to put them back to sleep at the end of the training see their everyday life filling up with magic. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path

Thursday: 134.0

Injury check: I definitely did *something* to my left hand. It's been several weeks now and it's still paining me. I don't think there's anything broken, but perhaps a ligament or something? Again, happy that it's not the dominant hand for a change. Also happy that it seems to be one of those mere "pain" type things as opposed to an "impaired function" category.

Seem to have sustained a minor rib injury last night. It doesn't seem too serious, but I'm going to need to be careful to not  strain it too much. Thankfully, it's not in the rear right (the site of last year's REALLY bad rib injury... that bad puppy STILL twinges now and then) nor the low left front (the site of my very first two "rib out" injuries). This one appears to be  front right, breast level- but I can see it extending back to the previously injured Bad Place if I get too careless in the next few weeks.

Thursday lunchtime BJJ, GB Bellevue. All spars, again. Very first one with the Prof. He let me do a De La Riva sweep on him, and complimented me on it- so it must have been okay.  :)

Just sort of surviving against several other people, with the exception of a medium-sized Asian white belt guy who mopped the mat with me. He was on top almost all of the time, and choked me twelve ways to Sunday. (I know the saying is "six ways to Sunday" but he choked me a lot more than that.) Frustrating. He got me with a single leg takedown three times in a row, and a head-and-arm three or four times (slightly different positions, but similar enough that I should have gotten a clue after tap number two). I tried my new Ezekiel on him, and it seemed to be promising for a bit, but I couldn't quite finish it. Finally I attacked him right off the handshake with my old standby, the guillotine- and was much relieved to get one tap on the guy. (He gargled a little bit, too, which was quite gratifying) Then he went right back to plowing me. Tired as I was (the two of us did one round during class, and several during open mat afterward), I started moving around more in the final roll, and lasted significantly longer. His technique was all good and tight, and every time I defended "correctly"- ie, roll toward the guy and not away, that sort of thing- we were just repeating the same roll over and over. It was a crappy roll (for me), too. So eventually it dawned on me that doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting it to turn out differently this time was stupid. Thus I started rolling away from him and doing other "wrong" things. Sometimes they worked and more often they didn't, but at least I lasted longer and we were doing something different.



Circus school (arial silk).

"Fuck."

I'd just like to note that the above is not something you want to hear from the ceiling, causing you to look up and see a teenager who is dangling upside down from a drape thirty feet in the air.

Luckily, the teenager in question- while apparently inexperienced enough to get tangled up in the silks and unable to extricate herself, was experienced enough to not fall and break her neck while being slowly talked through disentanglement by a teacher on the ground.

As for me: I reviewed a lot of stuff, most of which is coming back more and more promptly each class, despite my slow learning curve and only being there once a month. I not only completed an arabesque (at which I had utterly failed my previous attempt), but SMOOTHLY completed single footlocks in the air on both the dominant side AND the stupid side.

I was able to complete a lean-in, which I am terrible at but getting slowly better each time. Teacher asked me to try it on the stupid side tonight. Just doing the footlock on the stupid side was a challenge at first, but once I got into the lean-in, I found that the form was much better (and it hurt less) on that side. Huh.

Note that for the Russian climb, the knee needs to be on the outside.

Teacher is of the opinion that "things are (finally) starting to really click" for me (I don't think she actually said the "finally", that's my addition..... I'm satisfied anyway).

Things that still need improvement: LOOK AT THE KNEES... yeah, I'm still forgetting that. Also, going into upside down straddle- that's easy when I jump up and throw myself into it with my head back, but apparently that's a no-no. I'm supposed to ball up and then SLOWLY tip back into it (looking at the knees the entire time, natch). I'll be damned if I can even figure out what muscles need to be engaged to accomplish this bizarre feat. I hope that whichever ones they are, I a)possess them, b)can locate them at some point, and c)they are strong enough to do the job.