Hee hee hee

From the Side Control Blog, re: stretching:

Maybe it would be different if I were already a flexible person and stretching was more a combination of maintenance and showing off (bitter much?).

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LOL.... this guy trains at my school. I now have an evil temptation to wait till he comes in, and then casually wander over near him, place the sole of my foot on the wall and touch my nose to my toes. I'm so naughty.

I lost- but I got one applause-worthy kick.

Woke up Friday morning with a sore throat... actually, I woke up in the middle of the night with a sore throat (right in the middle of a really, really, really nice dream- curses!). I remembered Cindy mentioning on Thurday that she was unwell, so I thought, "Uh-oh, I've been tagged by Typhoid Cindy." As temping as it was to gloss over the sore throat (or neglect to mention it altogether), I wouldn't do that to CK when she's flown out here for her big tai chi seminar. CK seems to be particularly susceptible to illness when she's amid the Paciic Northwest Allergen Soup, and when she's been flying, and when she is sleep deprived (the Trifecta of Vulnerability), and I didn't want to risk making her sick for her seminar. So with great regret I cancelled our Friday morning/afternoon lesson. I figured I'd still go to Cindy's that evening (surely Cindy had already infected everything/everyone in her place, so it wouldn't matter), but she cancelled class at the 11th hour- she was even sicker. Bummer- I had had SK and JM all lined up to come with me. So I ended up not training at all on Friday, despite getting all dressed and packed for class twice.

So I got up today and found that I'd gained two and a half pounds back. You blow off one stinkin' day, and look what happens. I was really dragging butt and thinking about skipping class.... I still had the sore throat, but otherwise felt okay. But the scale, and the fact that it was Competition Class day, got me moving.

It was a good training day. There were a lot of us, so we had to take some breaks due to not enough room on the mat. I worked positonal sparring with Sonia, and we seemed pretty evenly matched today. I found out that she had been scheduled to have a fight with ShawnDee, the four-stripe blue that had been at the Bellevue school last week- ShawnDee had pulled out. Sonia was quite interested to hear that ShawnDee had turned up at the Bellevue school.

I also worked with Angela a bit. Angela has so much weight and strength on me that trying to fend her off (such as when she's passing my guard on the outside) is like trying to stop a Buick from running you over by bracing your hands on the bumper. I figured out pretty quickly that I did not want to be on the bottom in this scenario. I still ended up on the bottom more than I wanted to be. But I did get a couple of mounts and side controls on her.

The scabs scraped off the gi rash on my chin and I was bleeding everywhere. There wasn't anything much I could do about it- I couldn't bandage it.

Open mat- I had a few more rolls with Sonia, till she had to leave; then I crawled over to Daniel (who was sprawled on the floor on his back) and mounted him- so we rolled a while, till HE had to leave, and then I asked Dave. Dave tapped me about five times, but he did tell me that I was making him work for it.



Later.............................


CN's Conditioning Boot Camp.

Those guys were laughing at the three perfect fingerprint bruises on the inside of my right bicep, mirrored by three perfect fingerprint bruises on the OUTSIDE of my left one.

An hour of conditioning drills. There is an evil thing called the "Scorpion"- it's like a push-up, with one hand and the opposite toe on the ground. You twist and arch your other leg over your back as far as you can, and you try to touch your shoulder to the ground. CN says that he knows one guy who is really, really, really fit- and he can do ONE. I tried it, and I can get the position, but once down I can't push back up again. This would be a fun thing to work on, though, and then come back and show off being able to do at least a few!

At the end, when we were all exhausted and sore, CN wanted us to spar a little. He let us negotiate our parameters. Me vs JM first. It went to the ground fairly quickly, and turned into BJJ. She got mount on me several times, but I escaped, and she couldn't get a sub. CN finally called time as I was sitting on her shoulder prying her arm out for the armbar. I called, "No, no! I've almost got her! You have to give me one more minute!" So he did, and I got the armbar. :-)

CN faced off JM and SK next. She did okay for a while, but then SK got her in a rear choke. She froze up- and apparently got choked a bit harder than she wanted to be, then thrown to the ground with a bit of a neck twist added. She benched herself. Not good. This sort of thing is reinforcing JM's general intimidation around sparring (and especially sparring with SK). This sort of thing is also reinforcing CN's and SK's reluctance to have us spar in class.

So CN looked at me next, and said, "You want a piece of him?" (Heh) I haven't sparred SK in a long time, and within a few moments I re-remembered some things I ought not to be doing.

1)Chasing his strikes. As a general rule, chasing strikes is a bad idea, but especially with SK. He is The Snake Guy. That is is his game. As Cindy said to me on Thursday- Don't play THEIR game.

2)Getting too tense/Poor breathing. As soon as I faced off against him, I noticed that I was very tense, and breathing fast. My physical breathing problems mean that I have to be extra careful about that, or I will be out of breath very early into the spar. I had to force myself to calm down, and even out my breathing. I had to do that several times.

3)Frustration/anger. Part of SK's game as Snake is to use his longer reach and quick strikes to thwap me repeatedly on the face, the back of the head, the ear. It frustrates me and pisses me off, and I start getting sloppier. Had to remind myself several times to back off, calm down, don't let him goad me.

I didn't do very well against him- I never do, and being out of practice against him made it worse. I did get in a few knee/skin kicks and a couple of belly/groin kicks. He tried unsuccessfully to take me down a number of times, and commented, "Your rooting has gotten a lot better- I can't pick you up any more!" He did eventually get me down, of course, and tapped me out with a leg lock.

I did get one truly spectacular hit, though. I jumped guard on him- knowing that it often nonplusses him for a moment when I do that- and then slid down his body, keeping one arm and one leg. As soon as my back hit the ground, I pistoned a thrust kick up into his belly. It was a thing of beauty- and the best part was that I PLANNED it out and it worked! I got a round of excited applause and cheers from the others... and I gave them a quick bow after I rolled to my feet. CN was still raving about it while we were walking back to the car.

Micro-fu

I went to Cindy's lunchtime no-gi class today. So here's where Leah (and Dan) have been hiding! She said that she's not training at Gracie's any more. I asked if she knew whether or not Henrique is coming back (because I've heard conflicting rumors), and she thinks not. Sadness.

I told her that I was thinking about doing the next Revolution, and she was like, "Oh, no, no, you so don't want to do that!" I knew that she didn't ever want to compete again; that she'd had a poor experience with cutting weight and then having to fight women who would have been a lot heavier than she even BEFORE she cut weight. She thinks I'm going to end up with three or four women (if even that many) in the whole tournament, and all at least half again my weight. Well, that's a real possibility, it's true. I told her that at least Bianca would be there. She said, "Bianca has forty pounds on you." ??!! That can't be right.... I thought Bianca was close to my weight. I'm pretty bad at estimating other people's weights, though.... (If Leah is right, then I wouldn't feel quite so lame about my spectacular record of suckage opposite Bianca.)

Half an hour of awful warm-up. There were a few newbies in class today who were flagging... so Cindy didn't drive us quite as bad as she had on Friday, but still- no softie warmups around here.

Due to aforementioned newbies, we did very basic stuff. Keylock, simple armbar. Then keylock fail transitioning into armbar. I worked with a newbie, and I confined my advice to the single most glaring thing he was doing wrong per drill set. I think that's a good tack to take as far as giving advice... if they are blatantly clueless, I'll offer one thing, and if they want more help, they can indicate so by their reaction... otherwise I will shut up and leave them alone after that one thing.

Unfortunately, Cindy was feeling a bit under the weather, and so she didn't roll with any of us today. Bummer.... I'd brought a gi jacket in case she had time to work on choke defenses with me (as she'd suggested on Friday). The silver lining, though: truthfully I'd had mixed feelings about the prospect of having Cindy sawing aggressively on my neck today, right overtop of the gi burn that Glen left yesterday.

So after drills, I got short timed rolls with several people. Leah first. I did not get subbed by Leah- I count this as progress on my part. She had a painful and air-depriving choke on at one point, but I stuck it out- and about two seconds before I would have had to tap, she gave up and moved on. Ha. That does not work on Bianca...that woman just keeps grinding at it.... but it worked today on Leah.

Leah was keeping me at bay with her long, long legs. Cindy called over to me "That's her game- don't play her game! Close in!" She's right. I think I do that too much- play other people's games. I need to experiment with going into rolls with a determination that we are going to play *MY* game.

Dan- this is the first time I've worked with him. He was so embarrassingly bad when he first started at Gracie's. He was getting privates with Henrique... and now working with Cindy... he has a blue belt now, and he deserves it. I wasn't sure how hard I could go with him, so I was conservative. Next time I think I will need to step it up.

Some other guy I have never seen before... heavy, heavy guy. I was nervous about working with him- he could have crushed me really easily. But he was okay. We seemed fairly evenly matched (with him being nice about not using his weight). He tapped me once with an armbar. One more guy, I've seen him before, but I can't recall his name. He spent much of the roll in turtle, and I was having little luck dealing with it. I have learned a number of turtle-related techniques recently, but most of them use the gi.



Later....................

Kung fu Thursday. No SK, but CN was there to teach. It was just me and Nemesis, with JaE for part of it.

We warmed up with "build-a-form". JaE was adding two techniques for every turn of his instead of one, so the forms were long and complicated... I struggled a little with remembering the sequencing.

CN asked what we wanted to work on, and all three of us mentioned items that could translate to the two- and three- step self-defense exercises we have been doing for the last two weeks. So we had two people at a time work together while the third observed with CN. Straight punch (left and right), looping or haymaker-type punch (left and right)- mixing it up.

I did a little better tonight on waiting those extra two seconds to be sure of what was coming in and on which side (that had been my request item for today). I was being attacked by Nemesis, at Wing Chun range (that's really, really close in) so it was intimidating.... but I made him slow down several times. Then JaE attacked Nemesis, and then I attacked JaE. CN had suggestions for all of us.

For the last drill set, CN had us add "finish-him-off" techniques. I stuck to the same small selection that I feel good about. I just get too easily flustered when I put too much pressure on myself to get creative.

Individual forms time. I was resolved to ask for forms help, but CN was helping JaE- and since JaE hardly ever gets to come to class, I feel like he needs the attention. So I bowed out, but CN came over to me later on anyway. I had run briefly through a number of things while he was working with JaE: Three Step Arrow, Snake Versus Five Animals, Hurricane hands, Touch Bridge, Northern Mantis, the most difficult flying spinning kick out of Tiger Versus Crane. I am thinking about asking JM to help me with that particular kick. That is what the other students were working on while JB and I were doing BJJ during Kung Fu class a couple of weeks ago. I know she's good at this. I wonder if it would make the problematic situation between her and I better or worse if I actually actually go to her and request her help with a few things.

So CN asked if I wanted any help, and I had him look at Touch Bridge. He said that the flow was nice. YAY- Touch Bridge is a Dragon form; flow is the most important thing, and something that I have worked very hard on. It is great to hear (from the DRAGON stylist) that the flow looks good. He suggested that I use longer steps during one backward-stepping section, because the sequence is about luring the opponent in before nailing hir with a palm-heel.

He asked, "Anything else?" And I said, "Name a form!" He had seen me doing a little Three Step Arrow, so he asked me to do that. He suggested a footwork improvement.

I told him that this is perfect- one to three corrections per form, that's not too overwhelming. So he said, "One more." He wanted Sil Lum Dao, since this coming semester is Snake/Wing Chun semester in the Tuesday class. I hadn't done Sil Lum Dao in a while, but it went okay. I did the version that I learned first (from CC). There is a great confusion of different versions of this form. We talked a little about the wrist releases, and CN also mentioned my persistant "micro-fu" habit (I fail to fully extend many of my strikes). He had also reprimanded me for micro-fu during the build-a-form-game earlier. This should be one of the areas where I place a lot of ongoing attention in the next few months.

He asked me how the essay assignment was going. I guess he might not forget about that after all.

Rodrigo needs to switch to decaf.

131.0

I weighed all three of my gi's and accoutrements.

sports bra + undies + thin tank top + bike shorts = 1lb
Atama unbleached cotton gi= 3.5lb
Howard white gi= 3.5 lb
Atama "summerweight" white gi= 3.5 lb (huh!)

The Atama summerweight has those ripstop material pants, and the Howard has shrunk a bit so that the sleeves are a little short- so I think it's going to be the unbleached Atama for the comp (AFAIK, the unbleached cotton still counts as "white", and I don't think the Revolution is anal-retentive about gi color anyway). I'll make sure to ask Cindy to look at my gi and make sure it's okay.
I forgot to weigh my belt (that would be funny if that was what put me overweight).

First thing this morning, I weighed 131 at home (naked). After breakfast and hydration, at the gym and wearing gi + underclothes= 136. (Right after an hour and 15-min class... an intense one, with no time given for water breaks- I weighed myself in the gi again, and I had lost 1lb of sweat!)

Glen was there! He has been gone for six weeks (busy-ness combined with rib injury). He says he's gained twelve pounds! He started to get into line ahead of me, and then did a double-take at my belt and moved around in back of me. I asked him to drill with me, and promised to take it eay on his ribs.

Yeah, Rodrigo must have had too much coffee this morning- he was seriously jacked up. He took over the class from Carlos and was counting really fast, driving us with his patter of "Faster, come on guys, faster, Let's go!" and he kept saying "One more, just one more!" and then proceeding to make us do about EIGHT more.

Hip throw, Defending the one-sided under-the-leg guard pass (and replacing full guard), and triangle.

Glen went to hip throw me, and.... nothing happened. Murfle. That almost always happens the first time someone tries to throw me (or if it's been a long time since they have). I reminded him, "You're going to have to squat waaaaaaaaaaaay down to get under my center of gravity."

I am still struggling with the triangle. I am pretty sure I understand all the pieces, and people are insisting that I can't keep blaming the shortness of my legs. I'm trying to hip up further (That's almost certainly the largest part of my problem, now that I have fixed my angle issues), but it's so hard when I'm already exhausted half to death by the time we *start* the drill. I also have to make a ton of little adjustments which take a lot of time- I can't imagine I'm going to be able to hang onto the opponent long enough to get all my adjustments made. Glen and I gave each other good feedback on the angles, etc of each other's triangles. We drilled till we were ready to die, though- and it must have been even worse for him, after being out for a month and a half. "Way to dive back in, huh? Aren't you glad you came back today, didn't you miss this??!"

I had forgotten that drilling with Glen often means going home with mondo gi burn. My poor chin! Aloe gel and ibuprofen time.

Unfortunately I had to leave before open mat in order to go to work.

Rodrigo announced that after the Seattle school moves (At the end of this month), there will be a small invite-only tournament in the new building on Oct 2. I would like to go to that and at least watch- I'm not sure if I want to compete.

The new schedule is also up- to go into effect after the move. They have the basic BJJ and the advanced class in the same time slots. This is no conundrum for me, as I know I need to stay in the basic class for a while yet. But I'm not happy at the idea that this will likely mean most of the colored belts (including the majority of my favorite training partners) will defect to the advanced class, and I will be working with a bunch of Spazzy newbies. Furthermore, when there's a Bellevue class and TWO Seattle classes going on simultaneously, who's going to be teaching that third class? I hope the basics class isn't going to get sloughed off on someone I don't like!

Canned Tunafish Cage Wars update: our latest contender is BUMBLEBEE. Bumblebee TKO's Safeway Brand, but cannot compete with Chicken of the Sea.

Black Craney Wing Chun with a Tiger twist

Tuesday morning BJJ in Bellevue (aka The Danger Room). Same techniques as yesterday morning. Same drilling partner as well....not that I mind, although we probably should have grabbed somebody with a different body type just for a more varied experience. But everybody else paired up quickly and Dex and I were left standing there staring at each other.... so okay.

Focusing on refinements. Pendulum sweep: grab nearer the ankle than the knee. It's not about lifting the opponent's leg. It's all about the leg in hir armpit. Armbar: hip up nice and high so that your crotch is right in hir armpit and there's no space.

Breakfall to tactical standing: Carlos wants us to guard with an arm at nose level. I got corrected because I was holding mine at brow level. This is going to be a bit of a challenge for me. CK has whapped me in the head with a sword whenever I let my guard arm drop below brow level, so I have been completely brainwashed to keep it up there. I tend to be wary of an arm strike coming in (if not necessarily a sword in most hypothetical cases!). But I can see that in most hypothetical cases, it makes much more sense for the standing opponent to be kicking at you (on the ground) as opposed to trying to strike you with hir hands. So I need to adjust my tactics for the situation and not rely on the "standard response".

Positional sparring: Dex and I let each other work the sweep/armbar, giving just enough resistance to make it a challenge.

Open mat: I had to take a little break, as I was very sweaty and tired. But once I got my breath back, I did a few rolls with Carlos. I am having zero success with my clumsy choke attempts on him, although he is leaving me gaping openings to try them. he is also still reversing me at will with laughable ease. I tried to keep off the bottom, but it is very physically and psychologically daunting to feel/see yourself going down with this very strong, long-limbed, rubbery person descending upon you like a big shovelful of dirt on top of your own coffin.

He really tires me out quickly, as I am trying to stay on the move. Holding still for even a moment means that he is getting holds and placing his feet in places that I know I am not going to like, so I am constantly jitterbugging around trying to displace whatever he's setting up. I am hearing a mental "Squelch-POP" every time he places a foot on me- like a suction cup sticking on. I do not want his suction cups sticking onto me- anywhere- I figured that out pretty quick.

He was doing much the same thing that Cindy was doing with me on Friday- letting me try some different things and seeing what worked and what didn't. But he wouldn't wait forever- if I tried four or so things and was getting nowhere, eventually he would jump up and spin us around and now we're somewhere new. As if I had X amount of time to figure it out, and if I didn't- "fail" and move on to a new test.

When we were done, he did put on Very Serious Face and told me that I had gotten better. I couldn't tell for sure through his stilted English if he was saying I'd gotten better over the course of the rolls we'd done TODAY, or if I'd gotten better since he first rolled with me almost two months ago. Oh well, the important part was "BETTER"- I'll take "better" any way you want to give it to me.


Later...........................


Tuesday evening BJJ. It was cold and rainy enough today that we went inside. It's sad when we can't practice outdoors any more. I won't miss those humongous mosquitoes, though.

No CN again, no JB... sigh. I have been bugging her by e-mail to come back to class, at least come do a little BJJ. What responses I do get back are noncommittal. JM and SK are getting more slipshod about coming to BJJ as well- since I have been missing so many evening classes due to work; they get lazy when they don't have the peer pressure of me (and my carpool) to prod them to class.

I had a small headache on the drive in, but I took some drugs when we got to the community center, and luckily it died down a little ways into the class time.

We started with a few forms to warm up. The usual few we have been working on lately, and Lun Qi again... then SK asked me to pick a form. I picked Wood Monkey because we haven't done it in a while (that was why I had been picking Lun Qi these last few weeks, as well). JoE looked anxious (yeah, this is why we need to practice this one), but we reassured him we'd go slow.

Then we worked on the same two-step Wing Chun techniques we'd done last Tuesday. I drilled them with JM for a reeeeeeeeeeeally long time. JoE had to drop out because he was having back spasms. He asked if anyone would be willing to walk on his back a little- and as the lightest person by far, I decided that that should probably be me. I hated to miss the drilling (Lord knows I need the practice), but he must have really been hurting to ask.

When I got back from walking on JoE's back, the others were doing the Black Craney Wing Chun technique that CN had taught JM and me in the park on Saturday. Thank Gods I'd practiced this extensively- although Ihad only practiced it on the one side (and was just starting to feel proficient enough on that side to start practicing the other side). Well, now we were going to do it with actual partners, so I braced to get completely confused again. I tried it a few times on SK (just on the good side), and then started drilling with Nemesis. After drilling it about a zillion times, slowly, I started to feel brave enough to try it on the opposite side- and it worked, coolness. It worked even better after I added a knee to the groin at the end of the sequence- it just seemed to flow right into that so well. Level up!!!

After a while, SK came over to nitpick at me- he wanted me to stop doing such an exaggerated loopy rebound before the final parry/strike sequence. Oh, great. That exaggerated loopy rebound was my mnemonic for comprehending how to DO the darn thing (JM's suggestion that I "bounce" off the opponent's arm). Luckily, by then I had done enough reps that I was able to modify it without getting too discombobulated. I commented to Nemesis that it didn't have as much power without the loopy rebound- to which he responded, "But this way is faster." True. It was also more direct. With the bouncy, loopy rebound, it was Black Craney Wing Chun with a Dragon twist. With the bouncy rebound removed, it felt more like Black Craney Wing Chun with a Tiger twist. So that worked for me.

I considered making Nemesis take his shoes off before I would uke for him- I didn't really trust him kicking me in the side of the knee with his tennies- but I decided to see how he'd do first. He actually did really well with the control on that- and I told him so. I did make him take his shoes off before he started doing the close-in cat-stances, since he had already stepped on JM's foot and caused her to bench herself briefly while she bled and then put her own shoes on.

After we had drilled that thing forever (I am going to be doing that in my sleep tonight), we went through the dao-vs-bo sequence a few times. There was some confusion as to which staff was mine, as JoE had brough an armload of unmarked bo's, and I had no marks on mine (as I have not paid for it yet). Finally JoE and SK identified my bo because it was the shortest one in the stack (altho it is still a bit too long for me!) and it also had blood smears on it (which they decided was only appropriate for any weapon of mine). Yeah, I thought SK was pulling my leg- but when he handed me the staff, we all observed that it does indeed have red smears up and down the length. I don't know what caused this, but it truly does look like I beat someone to death with the thing.

"That doesn't feel right,"

131.0

I was dismayed to weigh myself on the scale at the Seattle school and see it say 139. True this was right after breakfast and a can and a half of Dr. Pepper, and wearing sports bra, undies, tank top, bike shorts, and full gi- but still, eight pounds???! WTF?!? I need to weigh the gi by itself. I was thinking it was going to be about 4lb. Either the gi is a lot heavier than I thought, or my home scale is weighing light (how bad would THAT suck.... argh!)

Monday morning BJJ. Prof. Carlos asked me where I'd been on Saturday, and I told him that I work every other weekend (at least). He also asked me about my "karate", so I took the opportunity to tell him it was kung fu. He asked if I was a black belt, and wanted to know if it was a similar belt system to BJJ. He seemed impressed that I'd been training that for about 4 years.

One of the purples- whose name I can't recall- is no longer purple. I looked him up and down and said, "Something's different.... I don't know what...."

Bryan was there too. I haven't seen him in forever, so it was nice to see him again.

Breakfall to tactical standing up. Pendulum sweep. Armbar from failed pendulum sweep. I drilled with Dex. Struggled a little with the pendulum sweep, especially on my right side. Gods, my sweeps still suck so bad. When we did the armbar, I got a correction from Carlos- I was grabbing the sleeve cuff when I should have been grabbing the tricep. After I got that problem fixed, I had a second one: I was letting go of the leg so I could grab the sleeve cuff again. I have a confession to make: I am a cuff-grabber. Sleeve, pantleg. I often don't know what to do with it once I have it, but I know that controlling a limb is a good thing- so I just latch on and cling like a doberman puppy. I am beginning to see how a tricep grip is often superior. Harder to get, though- especially in no-gi. I am going to try to remind myself to go for that tricep more often. Anyway, the armbar felt so insecure to me when I didn't have that cuff. I said to Dex, "Can't you just pull your arm right out of there? It feels like you could pull it right out." He said, "No, it's tight." When it was his turn, he said, "That doesn't feel right." "Toldja." "That feels weird." "I'm going to try to pull my arm out next rep." But I couldn't pull it out- so I guess it was okay.

Positional sparring with Dex- I know he's an MMA guy, as well as a white belt, so I was carful to give him my speech. I know he works with Bree, though, so I thought he'd be okay. And he was. Pass guard vs sweep only, then pass guard vs sweep or submit, then start in guard but anything goes. I seemed pretty competetive with Dex, but who knows how much he was holding back.

I had to leave at 1pm to go to work, so I could only say for one 7-min match of open mat. Dex again. It was a fun roll; neither of us got a tap. I would have liked to get a roll with Bryan- sigh. And I wasn't even feeling dog-tired, either, like I usually am by the time open mat rolls around.

Bouncing Crane

131.0….. ladies and gentlemen, we have passed the halfway point! Next month I will be seeing my 120’s again. JM told me today that the 7.5 fewer pounds “really shows”.

Conditioning boot camp. It was just me and JM, and one of her housemates. He gets discouraged because he can’t keep up with us MA-ists… he usually does about 1 third of the easier part of the workout… today he didn’t last very long at all.

Since it was just JM (tae kwon do background) and me (dance background), there were many kick exercises today. Spinning kicks, flying kicks, leg-sweeps, combos- some travelling, some more focused on fine targeting.

At one point, JM was collapsed spread-eagled on her back while we waited for her to catch her breath (this would be after the “exploding” clapping pushups- agh)… I finally called over, “You better get up, or I’m going to come over there and put you in side control!” Some random passerby did a double-take, and asked me if I trained at Gracie Barra Seattle with Rodrigo.

After we punched and kicked trees for a while, CN showed us a Wing Chun sequence. I got the first part fine- ton sau with palm-heel at rib level, weight shift to cat stance and then shovel kick. However, the second part stymied me- shift weight again, hands trade levels and go into Black Crane parry/strike combo. The way the arms were circling made absolutely no logical or kinesthetic sense (which is typical for Black Crane, if you ask me). It took me a long, long time to catch on. Finally JM suggested that I think of the right arm as BOUNCING off the opponent’s arm and then circling back in and under from that. InsecureDefensiveJealousResentful Beastie grunted from somewhere behind my gallbladder; I ignored it and tried her suggestion- oh, NOW it all makes sense. At least the right arm does, which means I can autopilot that arm and focus on forcing the left arm to submit to my will. I thanked her gratefully- twice. Hey look, I have the maturity level of an adult today.