Wrestling

"Great dancers are not great because of their technique,
they are great because of their passion.”
- Martha Graham


I got out my short sticks for the first time in way too long, and was dismayed to find that I CRS. Fortunately, I quickly found a Youtube with the simple drill that I (used to) know, and it came right back- high, low, alternating. Whew. I spent a long frustrating time learning that, and it would have sucked to lose it. I'd sure like to learn some more short stick drills.

Our new Turtle Drum host flaked, so I am on tap again for next month (barring unforeseen work shifts). The theme is "planting of seeds". I hope they are not expecting me to top the light saber! I have to find a new elemental chant to cast the circle with. I dug out a bunch of my old chant cassettes. While I was at it, I dug out my candlemaking supplies so that I can start recycling some of the wax from the Turtle Drum candles (good Green practice- from the Earth perspective *and* the $$ perspective). I also dug out a bunch of old Stephen King paperbacks. I'm hoping that rereading his stuff will inspire me to write more (and better). Realistically, though, I tend to just fall down the rabbit hole and come back to consciousness later to find that I have blown half the day reading.

I have skipped a bunch of classes in the last few days. I am having a really terrible time sleeping- the worst since fall '11. I'm exhausted all the time but can't fall asleep, and when I do get to sleep I keep 1)waking up again, and 2)having horrible nightmares. I am trying to sleep nights and be up days so that I can go to class, but that is not going over too well. I wake up feeling worse than I did when I lay down. Unisom and Nyquil seem to make it slightly more likely to achieve sleep (altho not reliably), but cause an increase in the nightmares. I really need to get off caffeine... but my God! Give me a break! People all over the place are boozing and drugging it up; my worst vice is a can of soda, and dang it I resent having to give that up.


Wednesday evening BJJ at Sleeper. We worked wrestling stuff tonight because Jalen is preparing for a competition. One of the things I like about this school is that the class size is often intimate enough that it's reasonable to focus on helping a teammate get ready for something specific.

Cindy let me have the pick of the litter for drilling, and I picked Jalen.

Double-leg takedowns. We have been working these in both schools, and I seem to be doing better at the drills (although I get very tired and sloppy after a certain amount of time). I remain tentative and clumsy trying to do them live, though. I tried one tonight during sparring, and made a hash of it.

You are turtled and opponent is sprawled N/S on top. You poke your head out from under hir RT armpit and use your RT (cross) arm to grab hir RT leg. Post your left foot. (Stay low- do not heave your body up while you are posting the foot). Sit out, kicking your Rt leg far out straight and landing on your RT buttock. While you sit out, post with your rt arm and throw your left up violently like you are hailing a cab. Your left shoulder and the left back of your head should be against opponent's ribs. Turn swiftly and take the back. (If you can snake your rt arm around opponent's near leg as you turn, so much the better.)

Next technique: Opponent is on his belly (this is a wrestling thing). You are mounted on hir back. Use left arm to press hir cheek to the mat. Crossface with rt arm. Dismount and go to the side. As you do this, place your left hand between opponent's knees.

Post on your left hand, and tiptoe around toward opponent's head side, dragging hir head along with you (still crossfaced). You want to use your entire body to force the opponent to curl up so that you can gable grip your hands.

Once you are gable gripped, sit out and shrimp your butt out so that you can maneuver opponent onto hir back. Your matward knee should be in hir back. Your face should be buried in hir shoulder.

Next technique: Opponent is on his belly. You are mounted on hir back. Use rt arm to press hir cheek to the mat. Go UNDER hir arm with your left arm. (You should not do this too close to the opponent's armpit, or s/he will simply seal hir arm to hir ribs and trap your hand.) Dismount on that same side, and shove your arm all the way up to your armpit (it is between opponent's shoulder and neck) as you tiptoe forward and smear your body along hirs to roll hir over on hir back.

Sparring- Jalen and Axel. I was having some contact lens issues, so I was sparring blind.

Jalen and I were working from standup. I tossed him over my head a couple of times, but was unable to follow up by getting on top. He got several nice takedowns on me. I was able to twist mid-takedown and end up on top a few times. We each got one tap- his a cross-grip gi choke of some type (it was slick, he sneaked it in and surprised me), mine the gi-tail baseball-bat... although mine was not clean; I had to chase him around, and get my foot behind his head, jump to the other side, and do some additional creative contortions before I finally got him knotted up enough to tap.  

I got two sweeps on him tonight, which I am very pleased about. One was a hybrid of a technique we worked on a couple of weeks ago; I'm not quite sure what I did, but it involved throwing the bottom half of my body up and over to the other side. I was quite astonished when it worked. The other was the leg-over-head reversal from bottom scarf. Again, I was astonished that it worked, and before I even got upright I was thinking, "He *let* me do that; this is a trap." Sure enough, there were his legs swinging up to grab my head. That's one of his favorites and he's caught me with it a number of times. Since I was ready for a trap, I was able to squirt out.. although not retain control, we ended up facing off on our feet again.

I remember sparring with Axel several months ago. He was fun, and tonight he was fun again. Not too big, just good enough to make me work, but not good enough that I couldn't beat him if I wanted to. I worked some, and let him work some. Cindy talked him through an upa escape, so I front mounted him several more times and let him practice that again.

Cindy had been watching my failed hip throw attempts on Jalen, and she suggested an alternative: get opponent pushing into me, then turn and grab the head in my armpit. Then kick my leg straight and sit out instead of throw. I tried it a few times, and like it. I need a review and some more reps to feel comfy with it. Note to ask to work on this again next time I'm in there.