Two sweeps

Despair is an indulgence.   –Karani


Bad nightmare last night. I had just been thinking with relief yesterday morning that I hadn't had one for a while. Later on, while the Prof and I were sitting on the wall, he was asking me some questions that touched on Traumarama Autumn 2011. Not being mean or overly nosy or anything, just curious. I know he had been concerned about me at the time because I had disappeared for a long while, and was really weird when I did show up (this is a *lot* weirder than my normal level of weird). Although I was reticent with my answers and changed the subject as soon as I could, I guess talking about those topics out loud was enough to trip the trigger. I had set my alarm to consider the 06:30am class, and thank Gods, cuz it woke me up from the nightmare (which had already gone on way too long). Unfortunately, although I then couldn't go back to sleep, I was way too traumatized from my nocturnal funhouse ride through PTSD-land to go to class.

Lunchtime BJJ at GB Sea.

Cornelia- whose pic I just used on my blog a couple of days ago- was there! She is back visiting for a month. What a nice surprise! She will be mostly in Seattle, though, and I am mostly in Bellevue these days. Hope I get to work with her a few times.

Standup- one collar grip, one elbow grip. Jerk down on collar, up on elbow, step to the side of opponent. Drop to the OUTSIDE knee, pick up leg, stand up and push. My challenge with this sort of thing is always using the correct knee.  Cornelia, who is a judo black belt, demo'ed how it's REALLY done.

You are in opponent's closed guard. Grip lapels, grip pants at knee, Knee-in-butt, break guard, push knee down. Opponent pushes knee horiz across your chest. You Grip lapels (your arm is now BETWEEN hir knees), sprawl hard, and catch the cuff of hir mat-ward arm. Catching this wrist is critical, so that s/he can't move hir shoulder and escape. Jerk the arm UP. Tiptoe around hir legs and pass.

This was an unfamiliar one for me. The combo of a good drilling partner, and the Brazillion reps (hee hee, yeah, I'm gonna drive you nuts with that for a while) that we did caused me to go for trying it on the stupid side. The stupid side turned out to work better for me because it was my stronger arm yanking that cuff up. This is one of the reasons why it's good to at least try it on the stupid side.

A little positional training starting from when your partner gets the lapels but not the arm cuff.  I somehow got Cornelia in some weird summersaulting reversal which of course had me thinking, "YOWZA, lookit that, I'm doing a SWEEP and it's WORKING, OMFG!"  I had paused about ten seconds before I did this to ask "Are you okay?" because she made a noise or a face or something, and she said fine, but as soon as I did the reversal (Lordy, look at that sentence.... ***I***DID***a ***REVERSAL****!! And on a good blue belt!), she was making another face, and I said again, "Are you okay?" This time she said, "No." I had overcranked her shoulder while I was flipping her over. I felt terrible. I _never_ hurt anybody in class. I particularly don't want to break Cornelia when she only has a month to train here and she's a great partner. Turns out she was okay, but it scared me. She didn't make a peep, and she should have, though. Still my fault. Relieved she wasn't more damaged.

One roll with a medium-sized blue belt guy, one with Cornelia ("You *YELL* if I hurt you, okay?"), one with Kyle. I am still sucking epically on finishing subs, but my positional work has been darn good these past couple of weeks. Lots of passing top half guard, lots of top KOB, lots of top side control, lots of top front mount. Yesterday and today, I have actually felt like a Real Blue Belt on the mat, which is still pretty rare.

I have been going over those three spider guard sweeps from last week repeatedly in my mind. Today I ***DID***ONE*** on the medium-sized blue belt guy. And it worked. This is such a huge deal. It was the standing one. And against another blue belt, not some clueless newbie. And I even finished in a top side control. One of my challeneges is that I sometimes have a difficult time getting up and getting on top quickly/smoothly enough even if the opponent goes down/over. Anyway, it worked,  and I'm thrilled to pieces.

Lost a contact on the mat, for the first time. Luckily it happened in slow motion; I could feel the eyeball being rubbed, then my vision in that eye went blurry, so I cupped a hand under it, blinked two or three times, and the contact popped out and fell on the mat.
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Evening no-gi at Sleeper: nothing like a little no-gi to put me back in a humble place, LOL!

Basic guard break to disengage, grab ankles. If opponent pushes back: slam the feet to the floor, leap over them to front mount.  If opponent doesn't push back- press hir knees to hir nose and sit on top, then lean down for one underhook and spin your legs the opposite direction ("breakdance"). These can be a pair of very uncomfortable- even dangerous- techniques, so I was relieved to be drilling with Lamont.

King of the hill from closed guard. I did poorly here. The mat was pooled with sweat, and my knees couldn't get any purchase, which didn't help.

Rotating spars with lots of people. Besides Jalen, Cindy had three new (to me) preteens in there tonight, one of whom is already way heavier than me, but the other two were about my size and somewhat lighter. I got to spar the two smaller ones, including some standup, and that was really fun. They have some wrestling skillz. I was very careful to not muscle keylocks and things... I'm not used to having to be careful to not muscle people! The only thing I muscled was an armbar that the kid was gable-gripping his hands to defend- I pried his hands apart with my feet, and I called it fair because I can do that even on people quite a bit stronger- that is just a contest that the gable-gripped hands are gonna lose. I set it up slowly and deliberately enough that he could see what I was doing, so hopefully that was a learning opportunity and not me being a bully.

I did use a little unfair weight a couple of times while passing guard, I think, but I reined that in as soon as I realized I was doing it. They were good enough that it didn't give me too much of an unfair advantage, but I kept trying to remind myself to not do anything that I don't like having done to me by heavier people.

One of them got my back in standup twice in a row- gotta watch that, especially with the wrestlers. I was doing way too much turning because I was trying to hip-throw them; I should have switched to something different after the first couple did not work.

With the adults in particular, I spent too much time in bottom half guard again... however, I seemed to at least be moving around under there a little more, switching from side to side, groping for stuff- as opposed to lying there like a dead fish (Bryan's description). I hope this is the first phase of actually learning how to get the heck out.

If they put me in scarf, or backsit on my head, I still can't usually do anything till they move.