Chi sau

Even more than strength and agility, awareness is our best weapon: a dynamic awareness that can look simultaneously into the present, the future, and the past. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path

MM is in town briefly, and he invited me to get together and spar this morning.

It was kind of hard being at Volunteer Park- which was one of our Kung Fu sites. Seeing MM and doing Kung Fu also- although the Park was the worst part for some reason. Difficult painful stuff is being stirred- although it was already being stirred in these last few weeks.

It was a good workout, though. I have not sparred Kung Fu in a year, I think (I know CK and I didn't work on sparring the last time she was in town). I felt really rusty and somewhat intimidated. MM's quite a bit above my level in Kung Fu (would be even if I wasn't suspended from training), plus he's trained in a whole bunch of other MA's. He's a medium sized guy, but very strong. He has decent control, though, and I feel fairly safe working with him.

He did clobber me quite a bit. His arms and legs are longer than mine, so I remembered fairly early on that I can't really stand at (his) reach and trade strikes. So I tried to get in close on him. We did a lot of what I would classify as standup grappling. I almost took him down once, but otherwise no joy- he's really hard to take down. I got his back a number of times (like a wrestling hug around the waist), but could not do anything from there. He's too tall for me to get a choke from the back, and I tried stridently to get a takedown from there with no success. The best thing I did from there was to inch a bit to the side and get a hook kick into his groin once (a feat of flexibililty).

He tried vehemently to choke me several times (including getting my back and picking me up off the ground by my head, trying to get a hand wedged under my chin) and did not manage to finish one, which I am pleased about. He did get a large number of belly shots. Note also that I am still (STILL! STILL! STILL! AAARGH!!!) trying to stop kicks with my hands (my palm-heels, as if using fisted hands wouldn't be bad enough). What's it going to take to rid me of this instinct?

He got me a really hard kick right in the bottom of the kneecap once, ugly enough that I had to call uncle and lie down to writhe around in the grass in pain. I forgot to bring my jow, too. He poked and pressed at it a little... I'm not sure what he was doing; he seems too much of a straightforward science nerd to be into reiki or running chi... but after a few minutes I was able to get up and continue. It didn't bother me in BJJ class later,and now it feels just fine. (Relieved.... when it first connected, I thought, "%$^#! That's it for the day- maybe the next FEW days!")

We finished with some sticky-hands. Still feeling too much strain in the biceps, and a bit of elbow-flying... but much less elbow flying than I used to do, and I was doing well at keeping my shoulders relaxed and my form decent.

Really enjoyed that, despite the negative-emotion stirring and the whack in the knee. He will be visiting again in the winter, and hopefully we can do this again.

We worked from 9 to 11:30. I had brought my BJJ bag and could have just made it to lunchtime class, but I was too ravenous. I had to eat- and going straight to BJJ from lunch is asking to find yourself hurling in the alley before warmups are done. I had slept very poorly the night before, so found myself too lazy to get to the 4:30 basics class. I was less sorry about that when I got in at the tail end of it to see that it was just Ritchie, a brand-new humongo white belt, and another white belt that I've worked with a couple times before and I know is *WAY* too spazzy for me to work safely with.

So just competition class. Standing pass wherein you sort of slap the knees to the side and lunge past to KOB. This particular pass was one of the most difficult episodes *EVER* in regards to my "I can't tell my left from my right" disability. I remember trying to do this pass about a hundred times with Carlos standing there saying "wrong" every time because I kept reaching first with the wrong hand, stepping first with the wrong foot, or both. I felt a little bit of jelly-belly as soon as I saw the pass, but luckily I seem to have evolved since that bad episode- and I had no trouble with it. (Not so the big white belt.... he got pushups for saying the s-word on the mat...)

Then the same pass to KOB, transition to BOTH knees on belly, transition to front mount. Just to make it more challenging to maintain balance and control, we were to keep both hands on top of our heads like POW's. Marcello was looking at me with serious angst on his face. He's not that big, but seriously, I'm a tiny mouse. I told him, "Do this on my stomach, not my ribs." The bad rib area seems no worse and maybe a bit better in the last few days, but even so... my abs are pretty tough, I can take a guy up to medium-size kneeling on my belly if I gotta. He kept murmuring, "Are you all right?" Yeah, just stay off my ribs, and I'll live.

Then we added an escape to replace closed guard for the person on the bottom- the turn, comb the foot over, turn thing that Leslie and I were just talking about yesterday (she linked to a vid of Emily Kwok demo'ing it).  It's both Leslie's and my fave reaction to front mount, and it works very reliably. In this instance, after getting half guard and scooting out to the side, we were to push on opponent's far knee and stick our foot through to replace closed guard.  To my intense unhappiness, partners were switched and I was put with Ritchie. He's mostly okay with drills, but he's one of the very last people I want bouncing on both knees on my belly. I'd rather have Marcelo, for all Marcelo's probably twenty or thirty pounds heavier. Well, frame those elbows, cross your fingers and suck it up. He actually turned out to be okay. He had a little trouble combing my foot out.... my short legs make it more difficult for people to do this technique on me.

Prof finished us up a little early, with no positional sparring or free rolling- which was probably just as well, since Marcelo was the only person there (besides the prof himself) that I would have felt okay sparring with.

Dan was sitting on the wall waiting for the next class, so I asked him for a roll. I seemed competitive against him. He is short, but stocky. He got my back a couple of times, but I escaped. He set up a few chokes that came close, and one armbar that came close, but got no taps. I set up a triangle, which was at a poor angle and I knew immediately that I wouldn't be able to finish it. Yet since I almost never even try for triangles, I was happy that I had attempted to set one up at all. I also got the grab-the-backs-of-the-heels takedown- I kept in mind SIDE CONTROL's advice about the technical lift, and was ready to do it, but I didn't need it- somehow the momentum catapulted me directly into front mount with almost no effort on my part.