I'm going to show you how to tap

In addition to physical confrontations, symbolic forms of fighting between reality and individual desires are the daily bread of anyone who is alive.  The physical violence that the hero … has to deal with is the most dramatic example of  something that everyone experiences in daily life: conflict. Conflict with friends, lovers, people who cut you off in traffic. Internal conflict with one’s laziness, weakness and lack of discipline. Conflict between desires and possibilities. Conflict between dreams and closed doors. Conflict between one’s ideals and ones’ behavior. Heraclitus was right when he said that conflict is at the root of all things. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path

Saturday FOD: Little Red Dragon
Sunday FOD: Frolic Of the Five Animals
Monday FOD: Spear Hand fragment. Note that it is the right arm that does the rising block.
I'm counting today as an exercise day. One of my instruments was busted, and I had to hoof samples to the hospital across the street. It's six minutes there and back if I hustle. The back corridor is about a block long, and deserted- so I did sprints.

Tuesday FOD: Southern Mantis fragment. This one seemed particularly rusty.
Shin splints from the sprints! Ow. (Can you say that six times fast?)
Wednesday FOD: Bung Bo Kuen

From the Insights list:

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2/1st Battalion, Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/2nd-1st-farewell-their-fallen-comrades-with-a-huge-haka.htm
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Wow. Incredibly moving. The power and emotion on every face, in every movement.



Thursday lunchtime BJJ at GB Belle. Ambushed John for a little warmup before class. I do this to people regularly, but I guess I haven't done it to him before. I sneak up behind them and take their backs and (slowly, to give them time to react) slide in a choke. He just sat there.

"Are you just going to sit there and let me choke you?"
"Oh, am I supposed to fight? I thought you were going to show me something."
"Yeah- I'm going to show you how to tap, in a minute, if you don't do something."
"I already know how to tap- it's my go-to move!"

Opponent in turtle, you sprawl on top N/s. Thrust your arm down beside hir neck on the cross-side (ie, your right arm goes on the rt side of hir neck). Tiptoe to the side that your arm is on, so that you are hip to hip, and grab both lapels under hir arms. Note- do not put your knee down here. For some reason I thought I had to wedge my knee up against the opponent's, but prof wants us to stay on the toes.

Now, jump your FAR knee to touch hir knee and use the lapels to pull hir over so that you are sitting in back mount. I continue to struggle a bit with remaining upright while doing this- I tend to want to roll too far onto my back.

Escape back mount: grab the feet and push them backward to force the opponent's knees to bend. PLace your left shoulder on the mat right outside her knee and roll onto it intil you are upside down and your toe touches the mat. Now thrust both feet in the air and throw your body across opponent's lap. You should be facing the feet. Hug the thighs. Do not try to skip the thigh-hugging step and go straight to side control. I asked why I could not do this, and Carlos kindly demonstrated why I could not do this- he easily escaped long before I could get in position to secure him in side mount.

Also- you cannot get too hasty and cheat the shoulder-stand or toe touch, because if you do, it's harder than heck to get your body all the way across the opponent's body.

Drills of this, to exhaustion.  Apparently we looked really good and were working hard, because Carlos kept telling us how proud he was of us (this of course makes me work even harder- I love to hear this).

I lost a stripe during the drills, and the prof- who is a huge stickler for having all your regalia neatly in place on the mat- pulled me off the mat and made me stand there while he replaced all of my stripes himself... apparently they were too ragged, and two more of them had squished together, so at that point it looked like I had TWO stripes instead of four.