Crucified!

It is important that when a new activity is being introduced, the practices that immediately precede it are will known to the student and the general movement pattern is similar to the new skill. The advantage of this strategy is that the student is confident in his own ability and has a starting point to work from. Having an existing frame of reference makes any demonstration or presentation  of a new technique all the more effective for the student, because he can quickly relate it to his own existing range of skills. With similar movement patterns, the rate of learning is much faster than with different ones, because part of the skill is already known.  Tony Gummerson, "Teaching Martial Arts"

Wednesday evening gi class, Sleeper Athletics.

One of the same chokes that we have been doing the last week or so, plus some new things:

Turtled opponent. You are hanging off the side, facing the same direction. Your near hand- place it on the back of opponent's head and press it down on the mat. Your other hand goes under opponent's near armpit and grabs the wrist of your first hand figure-4 style. Sprawl and tiptoe around opponent's head. The under-the-armpit hold should flip hir onto her side/back and allow you to take side control. Keep the weight on.

Turtled opponent. You are hanging off the side, facing the same direction. Arm nearest opponent- reach over hir back and under the far armpit. (Don't get too deep/committed with this hand, or it'll get trapped!) Grab the collar and shake it out so that you can feed it to your near hand- which is going right under opponent's chin.

Now: take that arm that's over opponent's back and grab hir far wrist, pull it toward hir body. Sprawl and choke. You can also sit out if need be.

Alternately: instead of the wrist, you can grab the other lapel. Sprawl and choke.

If the opponent posts up on arms: Take that arm that's over the opponent's back and wrap it under hir far armpit. The back of your hand is pressed to the front of hir bicep. Stand up and wrap your FAR leg over hir NEAR arm. Roll diagonally over hir head. As you roll, wrap your second leg around that trapped arm as well. I found that if I didn't pay attention to the placement of the opponent's BODY during the roll, I ended up with hir between my legs- or lying on one of them- and thus one of my legs was effectively out of commission, which FUBAR'ed the next step.

Now, if you have done this correctly, opponent is CRUCIFIED (mwah ha ha). Grab your own collar to help keep that arm trapped. If you can't finish the choke from here, you can switch your leg formation, hip out a bit, and use your topmost leg to wedge the knee behind hir head. Evil! But effective!

Sparring- tonight I was the nail, big-time. I got my butt soundly kicked by everybody in the place, except for Sony. I spent way too much time lying helplessly under side control. Erin's and Stacy's side controls are very good. Very tight, very heavy.

 Sony did really well tonight on the upa, KOB escape, scissor sweep defense, and choke defense. I'll have to challenge her with something new next time. She finished one of the head-and-arm chokes that we've been working on this week.

My knee held up okay tonight. Ribs kinda hurt. They took a hard thumping a couple of times.