The dog workout

Giving in to the urge to tell someone to fuck off can have lifetime results. Odds are good this guy will be out of your face and life in a few moments. But if you give in to the impulse, well, remember every time you “play”, you’re taking a chance.   –Campfire Tales From Hell



Well, it was not the caffeine. Nor the sugar.

I stayed on one soda per day (first thing in the morning) for a week.. Hardly any sugar, either. There was not one iota of change in my sleep patterns, my anxiety level, my energy level, or my weight. I am going to have to go to the doctor. Upside: now I can have my Dr Pepper, since I have proven that it doesn't do a damn thing to me.

Went hiking with CK last week- Twin Falls and Deception Creek. We were both tired, and not pushing hard physically. On her last day, we did a little stance work. Once again, just STANDING with CK is more exhausting than sparring with anyone else.

I got the dog on Wednesday. Well, dogS.... because I have White Knight Complex, I was unable to say no to the elderly dog's elderly buddy... and I consider myself damn lucky to have not ended the week with all three of them. The second dog is a foster- meaning I do not have to pay his vet bills. I have too many pets right now. It is a stressor. But they are all elderly or special-needs or both, and let's be real- chances are that one or another of them will kick off soon and I will be back to four, which is a number I feel I can cope with.

We are doing a ton of walking (which was part of the point of obtaining a dog). Up and down the neighbor's driveway, mostly, a ten-minute dirt-road stroll through the woods.  Yesterday we walked for two hours around Al Borlin Nature trail and downtown Monroe (where we were attacked  by a purse dog). Today we went to Big Eddy, which is only about 1.5 miles from my place.

The dog I picked is exactly what I wanted. She basically walks when I want to walk, and otherwise she is napping and completely unobtrusive and undemanding. It's like having a hiking buddy that you take out of a drawer when you want to walk, and then put away when you are done. The foster is proving to be more high-maintenence (no good deed goes unpunished). He's a dear, but he has a dismaying amount of energy for an elderly dog, and is constantly in my face. Tonight he was dragging me along on the leash (he wanted to RUN!!!), and when I tried to wear him out afterward with rowdy playing in the dog run, he wore ME out instead. Well, he is certainly going to be forcing me to get plenty of extra walking. It's going to be challenging for me to try to keep up with him, and even more challenging for my poor dog (who is game, but arthritic, and her legs are about half the length of his).


Thursday evening no-gi in Bellevue. It was fun to drill with Peter.

Pummelling, double-leg setups, Standing guard passes. Standing guard pass to KOB. Standing guard pass to KOB to back take. Two or three variations of the bottom person trying to defend, and the top person switching gears and completing the pass in a different way. I would have liked to get down the details of these, but I didn't blog it last night like I should have, and now the details are escaping my mind.

King of the hill: pass vs sweep, pass vs resist/submit. I got spanked; I drew exclusively very talented people. I did achieve one guard pass on a guy which surprised me. I hope he didn't hand it to me.

Friday evening BJJ in Bellevue. Drill-Till-Ya-Puke night. All from standing guard passes, which is a real bitch on my knees (and my thighs). Standing guard pass to KOB. Standing guard pass to KOB to armbar. Standing guard pass to KOB to kimura. After working with each of these for a few minutes, we drilled each 100 times. I had to hustle to keep up with Chrisanne, whose Monkey Bar Gym work and clean eating have me eating her dust. My thighs are on fire. I did well with remembering to grab the pants on the armbar. Also worked on pinching my knees together, a persistant failing of mine. I did less well with the kimura. I get lazy with the grips, especially when I am tired and trying to go fast.  The many, many, fast standing guard pass reps put me in a dangerous place- when I get really tired, I am prone to rolling my ankle out and twisting it badly. I did that tonight, but fortunately it was not too severe- I was able to continue, and it's not swelling or aching much at all later (thank you gods).

Chrisanne and I had wanted to spar after, but we were both too wiped out.

My thighs are going to be twin pillars of pain in the morning. Not looking forward to being hauled along that dirt road, but it will be the best thing for them. (A little hair of the dog, har har.)

Day one of one-a-day

 What you do instead of your work is your REAL work. –Roger Ebert



Thursday lunchtime BJJ in Bellevue.

Standup: opponent has both hands laced behind your neck. You lace your hands over hir elbow, chicken-wing your arm out and step to that side. This twists hir spine uncomfortably and makes it easier for you to move your hands inside and grab behind hir neck instead.

Next, we went from the chicken--wing-and-sidestep to a double-leg. Note that you must plaster yourself right against the opponent and slide down hir body, otherwise you will not be close enough. Hug just above the knees.

Opponent is turtled in front of you. Sprawl, crossface, sash grip around chest, switch far knee in, pull opponent into your back mount. Three notes: 1)don't forget to grab the wrist at the end. 2)You must make sure your shin is pressing against opponent before you start to pull hir over, and kick that baby under *as* you are pulling. If you wait till after you have hir capsized, it's too late to shove that foot under.  3)Try to dive in a diagonal direction over the shoulder instead of pulling opponent sideways. I continue to find myself subconsciously resistant to this, as I keep feeling like I am just going to slither my tiny self over hir shoulder and plop onto the mat while s/he continues to turtle there like a rock. This doesn't make logical sense, because if THAT is how it is, I am not going to be able to haul this person sideways either. I have nothing to lose and a slightly better chance of succeeding if I go on the diagonal. I found it slightly more palatable if I made a point of shoving the shoulder aggressively to the mat as I went.

King Of The Hill, sweep versus pass (any guard, choice of the "king"). I didn't do all that great, but I was overmatched by everyone (they all outranked me except for one big muscley white belt).


I'm doing it. I am going- not quite cold turkey, but- one pop per day (first thing in the morning). This is day one. I am jonesing badly, but it helps that I have no Dr Pepper left in the house (just A&W root beer, which is great, but not quite as bad of a trigger). I also took the A&W out of the fridge- it is not so tempting when it is warm, and I have no ice.

I want to do this experiment to try to figure out if it will help my crappy sleep any. Also, I am wondering if the sugar-induced glucose roller coaster is contributing to the fact that I feel exhausted all the time. This latter question involves ALSO cutting down on solid junk food. That's going to be extra-challenging. Usually when I'm trying to reduce my pop, I console myself with extra junk food, and vice versa. I don't like being at this weight. I don't like being exhausted all the time. I don't like not being able to get to sleep, and I don't like waking up every couple of hours when I *do* manage to get to sleep. I don't like getting up feeling even more exhausted than when I went to bed. I don't like the idea of going to the doc and getting on some drug to try to get some sleep.

Caffeine

If you see the situation clearly enough, you can almost always cheat from the other person's point of view.  You can almost always break rules that are only rules that exist in the other person's head.  And that is a huge advantage. -Rory Miller


Sunday: Mulched the roof. Yes, that's right. First, removal of fallen boughs; then, raking the leaves and accumulated mulch off the shingles; and just for extra yuks, scooping gutters.  Still have to clean up the mess around the porch- will do that another day. Ditto, the crap from the rear incline mostly went onto the back porch roof. That is already in the process of collapsing and cannot be walked on. I may be able to get some of it from the ground with the stepladder. Another day.

I had to take off my shoes and socks to do the steepest parts, and haul myself up to the apex by hooking the rake head over the edge and using it to pull myself up. I am the only physically able person in this household who is fit for manual labor, so I get all this sort of fun stuff. And yes, I had a (mini) Dr Pepper when I was done- so there.

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Monday lunchtime BJJ, GB Sea. No caffeine this morning. I felt limp.

I jumped on Crisanne before class, and taught her how to defend each of the things I had done to her last week in the mock tournament. In said tournament, she had also spent a long time trying fruitlessly to cross collar choke me, so I explained why that hadn't been working out for her.  Now I feel better, like I sort of made up for tooling her like that.

Standup: deflect fireman's kick (while turning at the hips), return with an elbow strike. This was just different enough from the Shaolin Black Crane version to royally screw me up. Carlos came over to correct me, shaking his head and saying, "Purple belt, purple belt...." I hate it when he does that... my insecurity immediately starts wailing that he must be regretting my promotion.

Guard pass: opponent has same-side sleeve cuff and cross-lapel grip. You grip hir lapels on the side that s/he has YOUR lapel, and pull your elbow in to constrict hir arm. With the other hand, grab hir pants at the hip. Open your own knee on the pants-grip side, push hir thigh to the mat. back out. KEEP YOUR BACK STRAIGHT and head up (yes, you can do this even if you're bent at the waist). Let go the lapel grip, underhook thigh, grab lapel again, stack, pass.

Drilled with Z. He is tiny, but has awesome pressure when he stacks this pass.

One roll with Lindsey and one with Bryan. I ended up getting one arm trapped over my own body with Bryan, even though I was paying attention to *NOT* letting this happen, since it had happened repeatedly on Friday. Lindsey- freakishly flexible. Very very good at replacing guard- she just folds up and sticks her knees back in there, from any position, no matter how you try to resist.

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Revolution……

In their respective brackets: Looks like Jalen got 3rd in gi (How did that happen? It’s difficult to imagine kids better than Jalen), and Axel got 2nd in no-gi.  Ben got 2nd (his first comp as a purple belt), Kaungren placed 3rd. Kelly got 2nd.  Relax-On-the-Mat got 2nd. Carlos- 1st.   E-man (the kid I bullied!): first in gi, 2nd in intermediate no-gi.  Looks like Cindy’s kids did well, several placements. As usual, GB didn’t win (or even enter) much no-gi at all. It would be nice to have more no-gi classes over there.

Had I competed this cycle, my bracket would have consisted of Amanda- that kick-ass woman from Straight Blast who tooled both me and Kelly last year- and Caitlin Carlucci (who blogs!) and had the gonads to step on the advanced no-gi tournament mat with CINDY last fall. (These were also the two competitors in advanced no-gi. 5 women placed in intermediate no-gi, where I most likely still belong.)  While those girls are scary, the niggling thought persists… well, two niggling thoughts.

1)Even if I pull a Titanic and come in 2nd in a two-person field or 3rd in a 3-person field, at blue belt that still pulled in a cubic buttload of points for my school. At purple, even moreso.

2)Competing is a great way to make myself be disciplined about taking off the extra weight I've collected.

Okay, one more: if I wait another 2 or 3 years, the bolus of great female blue belts that we have right now will turn into a bolus of great female purple belts. Which is incredible. But the option to collect points and medals by losing in shallow brackets will stop being an option in the predictable future.

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Tuesday and Wednesday: walked a mile each way, parking to work and back again. I tried to take the motorcycle to work today, and it up and died on me about a mile down the road. I had to walk back down there this evening and push that sucka all the way back home. There was a hill.

Making a point lately of walking out to get the mail, the trashcans, etc, instead of picking them up with the car on the way in. Extra bits of exercise.

Modest portion control steps, too...

I've been doing well with the caffeinated/sugared pop reduction- two weeks now, and I've been surviving on two 90-cal mini-cans per day. Although this is a cut of several hundred cals per day- as predicted- it does not translate to weight loss for me. I definitely felt the lack of the caffeine push at class on Monday. If that makes me drag too much at class, this could actually BACKFIRE. 

Carlos can be really driving in the weeks leading up to Pans.

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Now that the word is out, I guess, I can say that Cindy is closing her school at the end of the month. She's going to be running a Gracie Barra pod in Mill creek in May. In April, she will be at Bothell. I haven't been to the Bothell pod yet. I'll have to see what the commute is like to these two sites. Mill Creek is getting out into the sticks, but unfortunately that doesn't necessarily save you from the epic Seattle Rush-Four-Hours commute traffic (sometimes RFH is *worse* out in the sticks). Hopefully some of her students will be at Mill Creek- I will miss any that we lose.