"Twang"

“Cats never regret anything.” –Tybalt, King Of the Cats



No-gi at Bellevue. Crisanne is sick, and I emailed Kelly but she was busy. I thought I was going to be the only one there- which could, depending on Carlos' mood, turn into either a private or a cancelled class. As it was, Ben showed up. Ben is great to roll with, although it is an exercise in humility! So we just rolled for an hour.

With Ben, your number one goal is to stay out of his half guard. I knew this, but it's difficult. I usually charge in on my opponent immediately after the fist bump- and when Ben is sitting there on his butt with his knees apart, there's really no place else to go. With most people, beginning by stepping into their half guard is ducky.... because I'm good at passing top half guard, so we start the roll with me getting passing points and then side control. Ben, however, does not follow my script. 

He did show me an option which involved hugging below his butt- which you have to do fairly snugly, gripping one wrist with the other hand. Sprawl hard, sink weight down, pry/kick leg out.

At another point, he was observing that having my butt posted a little ways out helped me defend the sweep or roll. One of the things I'm trying to pay more attention to lately is my habit of pasting myself as closely to the opponent as possible at all times. 95% of the time, this is exactly what you want- but there are a few positions where you really need to scoot your butt out a few inches. I am trying to be more aware of figuring out those specific situations.

Another learning moment: being in the head and arm choke. I had the free arm- the one on the side closest to Ben- wedged in there horizontally with the elbow against his head, and it seemed like it would let me hold out for a bit. He suggested that instead I cover my ear with my hand. That didn't make practical sense to my brain, but I went ahead and tried it- and yeah, it was better. I was cooked either way, but the hand-over-the-ear bought me a little more time.

Straight ankle lock- he's playing with a  figure-4 grip here. I tried it and liked it. This might work better for me than the standard.


Coach Dynamo saw me standing on the mat doing toe-heel, toe-heel, and asked if I was doing ballet. I said no, I have plantar fasciitis. Turns out he has had it too. He poked at my foot a while. It was fairly painful after the afternoon standup class.

I'm sure CK- who often makes things in my back go "twang"- would be amused to hear that the coach actually made something in my HEEL go "twang". We found a knot in the bottom of my heel. It felt like a marble deep in there. Something is really skewed in the world when you can have a KNOT in the bottom of your HEEL. That can actually be twanged. That is just wrong.

I saw Pam in the locker room getting ready for the next class, and that made me want to do the next class. I actually felt fairly okay at that point, but I was pretty sure that after the warmup I would crash hard. Reluctantly I decided to pass.

Pam told me that every time she makes eggs, she thinks of me.

"There's no sweating in jiu jitsu ."

Fisher had tried to enter the hole in the clouds six or seven times- but kept finding
herself back in her body, the wooden raft pressing impassively against her
shoulderblades.  –The Hole In the Clouds


I'm feeling incredibly frustrated with weight right now. Yesterday I ate nothing but six shrimp, and a turkey sandwich (a little horseradish mustard at 5 cal per teaspoon, no mayo) and did two classes plus sparring after one of them, and still didn't lose anything. How is that even possible? Six shrimp and a turkey sandwich proves to be "TOO MUCH FOOD" on a 2-workout-day. Unbe-freaking-lievable. And that wasn't even horrible food- true it wasn't chicken breast or eggs, but it's not as if I was eating lasagna and Twinkies. It's starting to really piss me off- which is probably good, since being pissed is a good way to amp up the willpower. But I'm looking ahead with horror and dread to a life full of days restricted to two tablespoons of food per 24 hours, since it's starting to look like that's the only way I'm going to see any results. I think there must be hidden calories in my tap water or in my oxygen. This doesn't even make biological sense.

Tuesday lunchtime, Bellevue. Not that I had any lunch.

Two new ladies, one of whom I worked with- Tone. She has potential! I hope she comes back.

Setup to the straight ankle lock. Be mindful of changing level; and of using just the toe on the mat with that outside foot, heel on the hip.

Then finishing straight ankle lock.

Then defense: With the arm that is on the OPPOSITE side as the leg being attacked, grab opponent's cross lapel. Now place your other hand on opponent's ankle (the one s/he has on your hip) and press it to the mat. Post on it and scoot your butt to the outside of it. Now stand up. Shake/pull your leg out.  At first we used the technical lift to stand up, then we used the lapel grip to pull ourselves to standing or into front mount.

Spars with Casey, Ram, and Dave. I told them all to be nice to me because it was my first day.

Kitsune (grabbing Casey's ear): "Is it legal to pull ears?

(Grabbing fingers): "Are we allowed to bend fingers back?"

(Monkey-slap to face, pulled at the last moment): "How about this? Can I do this?"

I tried to Del a Riva him several times but could not control the near foot. Finally I tried grabbing my own lapel to cinch it in place, and that had a bit of success. Need to play with that some more.

I asked Dave to attack my feet and legs. As I had previously learned with Luis, when you ask a brown belt to attack your lower body, they do not mess around. I felt like I was trying to turn back the ocean tide. It just washed right over me no matter how frantically I worked, and left me lying there sodden and drowned... with legs broken in about ten different places.

I got a big laugh out of Ram by asking in exasperation, "How many knees do you HAVE?! about twenty???" Because that's what it seemed like. Here a knee, there a knee, everywhere a knee, knee.

When we lined up to bow out, Carlos made me move from the end of the line. I said, "Wow- I'm getting a huge promotion on my very first day!" Everyone started applauding me. 
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4:30 basics in Bellevue. I rolled with Casey again for a while to warm up.

Kitsune: "It's my first day. We're not going to get sweaty or anything, are we?"

JP: "No, there's no sweat in jiu jitsu."

Kitsune: "Oh good. I don't want to mess up my hair. Hey, we can do heel hooks in here, right? At my last school, we did heel hooks. This must be a wussy school."

These techniques were a little frustrating.

Opponent is in your closed guard. Grab behind hir elbow and get a pants grip at the knee with your other hand. Use your legs to pull hir forward and load hir up. Sweep. Keep guard closed till you get over- don't open up like a pendulum or scissor sweep.

Besides the fact that I generally suck at sweeps, the only available partners were gigantic- I couldn't even get my guard closed, and the idea of trying to pull them forward with my legs was laughable. They had to be nice to the extent of diving into the sweep.

Same thing, only underhooking the leg and using opponent's knee like a phone. Keep both leg and arm when you mount (I had to go to S mount in order to be able to do this on my larger partners).

 Then, that same setup but transferring to an armbar. I struggled even more with this one. If the guy was loaded onto me at all, I could not swing my leg around because he was crushing me half to death. Once I was tipping him off of me, I could not swing my leg around because his body was now in the way.

Adrian then showed us some nifty grip breaks for when the opponent is resisting the armbar. You thread your own gi tail through hir folded arms and cinch it up nice and tight. Your hand that is nearest opponent's feet needs to be on the bottom of your double grip. Move the elbow to the other side of this arrangement to clamp it up. Now look at the opponent's clasped hands. You want to pull in whatever direction the back of the hand is facing, instead of just cranking randomly when you might be setting yourself up to be resisting hir strongest possible grip.

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Advanced class.

I rolled with Crisanne for 10 min to warm up. She remembered my upa lessons, my KOB escape lessons, and my choke defense lessons. I let her triangle me a few times, but I made her work for it.

Straight ankle locks again. This time, when we did the escape, we sat right on the opponent's foot instead of moving our butts to the outside. Added detail- when you shake/pull your foot free, give a hearty yank on the lapel at the same time.It is distracting, at the very least.

Some positional sparring from the straight ankle lock setup. Ron was clumsy at first, and complained that he hasn't worked any attacks/defenses below the waist. I hear ya bro. After a while, though, he figured out how to get his evil little omnipresent knees and muscley little legs jammed in the works, and I could no longer do anything.

Hedge got his purple belt! That was fun to see. He was distinctly glisteny-eyed when he stood for the photo. Lord, but Ron is still running around in a blue belt. I was certain he'd get promoted at the big promotion orgy in Seattle last weekend.

Spars with a few different people, including Hedge- whom I congratulated, teased, and then went hard on.

Kitsune: "Come on- do you want to look back on your very first night wearing a purple belt and say you got choked by a white belt girl?"

  I had to watch the capoeira class for a while- in fact I watched till the teacher stopped and addressed me where I was hanging on the doorframe, and told me to come in and take a chair if I wanted to watch. I've always wanted to try this, but I fear that my weakness at memorizing choreography- as well as my bad knees- would scuttle me.  It sure is pretty, though. And I do such nice kicks.

I had damn well better be a pound down in the morning, or I'm going to just start sawing body parts off.