Del a Heeva

Often, the obsession for being fair and objective under all circumstances transforms our mind into a tribunal. We want tangible proofs and objective evidence to believe in what we already know. Unfortunately, intuition is not objective and offers no proofs. It travels on tracks that are much too fast to wait for the painfully slow speed at which logical analysis moves. Rational understanding arrives at the finish line hours later (if it arrives at all), only to confirm what intuition has already revealed to us. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path


Ha ha, I spoke too soon about my kicked knee being "just fine". I woke up about a dozen times during the night because I shifted my leg (I'm a very restless sleeper) and placed it in a painful spot. There's a large ouchie bruise on the inside of the knee. While MM was poking and rubbing it, did he shift the bruise from the front bottom kneecap to the inside??? I'm pretty sure I took the kick on the front. Well, it's better to have the injury on the inside, else I wouldn't be able to kneel on that knee very well right now for BJJ.

Friday Form Of the Day: Wood Monkey

WIP: What I thought was going to be a paragraph of filler somehow turned into at least one full page of drama that really added to the story.
I do not want any "filler" in my story at all. I just want to write the juicy parts and link them together. = All juicy, no filler.
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Saturday FOD: Chen Dao
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Sunday FOD: Hurricane Hands. Note that the ankle kicks- right first, then left.
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MOnday FOD: Three Step Arrow fragment
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Tuesday FOD: Leopard At Dawn
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Thursday lunchtime BJJ at GB Belle.

All spars. Both Johns, Glenn, some white belt guy with a couple of stripes (went with him twice). On the bottom a lot. All of them (except for the white belt) were being really good about getting on top and then just removing ALL the space as if they were sealing me in shrinkwrap. I simply could not move *anything*, and then they just leisurely set up armbars. If they couldn't finish the armbar, they wristlocked me (both Glenn and the smaller of the Johns).

The wristlocks were quite a reminder of the fact that I simply can't rely on the fetal-position defense. The guys I'm most often working with- good blue belts- are going to wristlock me if they can't get anything else.
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Basics class followed by competition class, GB Belle.

Basics: standing guard pass drills, with gradually varying options for the bottom person. Then some rolling.

Note- that sweep from bottom half guard that Ben is constantly getting on me- to defeat it, I must 1)stop him from getting the toe under my thigh... and that toe can be pretty darn subtle sneaking in there... or 2)if he's already got the toe in, I must narrow my base and squeeze his other leg between my thighs. The danger here is that this leaves me very vulnerable any other sweep, so I have to be ready to switch back like lightning, or do something else. After he did it to me about 4 times in a row, I stopped him and made him show me what to do against it.   :P 

Comp: De La Riva (or if you are Brazilian, "Del a Heeva") sweep: You sitting, opponent standing, you have both of hir wrist cuffs and your feet on hir hips. You want to be practically sitting on hir rt foot. Let go with your left hand and grab hir rt ankle. Move your rt foot to hir left knee and your left foot is underhooking hir thigh (from around the back). If you are a normal person, you can stretch the opponent out and topple hir. If you have mutant-like stubby legs, you must use that underhooking leg to BUCKLE hir knee.  In either case, keep hold of the leg and do a tactical lift. OR......

Figure-4 your legs on opponent's bottom leg (s/he is now lying on hir side facing you where you dumped hir after the Del a Heeva). Grab hir pantleg and the back of hir belt. Dive straight over hir back (roll on the shoulder nearest hir head). If you do this correctly, you end up right on hir back. You may have to shrimp into postition (I didn't). Then some rolling.

I had a discouraging day today. I have really been struggling badly with depression and obsessive downer thoughts about last fall's traumas- this is around the anniversary of that, and I'm frustrated and depressed that I'm still having such a hard time with this. It can be really hard to have a productive MA class with this garbage going on in my head and heart. I got plowed royally by everybody today and was getting to a very frustrated and dispairing place with it.

I do feel like I'm getting to a place very soon where there's going to *have* to be a "level-up". My old game and old habits are simply not working any more, so it's going to force me to go someplace new whether I want to or not. If I can plod through this particular emotional valley, I feel like there is better jiu jitsu on the other side someplace.

I look *SO* like a domestic violence advertisement tonight. Not only do I have the usual array of fingerprint bruises all over me, but Kelly gave me a huge ugly bloody split lip. She also hurt my knee with one of those Del a Heeva's, but that wasn't her fault- her legs are a lot longer, and she just stretches me out hard. Carlos was really pushing her buttons tonight, on purpose- I could tell he was trying to push her envelope with the type of criticism that usually makes her cry. She had the about-to-cry face a few times, but sistah did *NOT* cry, nor did she shut down- she answered his questions with Yes Sir No Sir, and kept it together. Good for her. She also kicked my ass. Gotta give credit where it's due.

Hey, Katie ("A Skirt On the Mat") was promoted to brown!!! Woohoo!

Chi sau

Even more than strength and agility, awareness is our best weapon: a dynamic awareness that can look simultaneously into the present, the future, and the past. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path

MM is in town briefly, and he invited me to get together and spar this morning.

It was kind of hard being at Volunteer Park- which was one of our Kung Fu sites. Seeing MM and doing Kung Fu also- although the Park was the worst part for some reason. Difficult painful stuff is being stirred- although it was already being stirred in these last few weeks.

It was a good workout, though. I have not sparred Kung Fu in a year, I think (I know CK and I didn't work on sparring the last time she was in town). I felt really rusty and somewhat intimidated. MM's quite a bit above my level in Kung Fu (would be even if I wasn't suspended from training), plus he's trained in a whole bunch of other MA's. He's a medium sized guy, but very strong. He has decent control, though, and I feel fairly safe working with him.

He did clobber me quite a bit. His arms and legs are longer than mine, so I remembered fairly early on that I can't really stand at (his) reach and trade strikes. So I tried to get in close on him. We did a lot of what I would classify as standup grappling. I almost took him down once, but otherwise no joy- he's really hard to take down. I got his back a number of times (like a wrestling hug around the waist), but could not do anything from there. He's too tall for me to get a choke from the back, and I tried stridently to get a takedown from there with no success. The best thing I did from there was to inch a bit to the side and get a hook kick into his groin once (a feat of flexibililty).

He tried vehemently to choke me several times (including getting my back and picking me up off the ground by my head, trying to get a hand wedged under my chin) and did not manage to finish one, which I am pleased about. He did get a large number of belly shots. Note also that I am still (STILL! STILL! STILL! AAARGH!!!) trying to stop kicks with my hands (my palm-heels, as if using fisted hands wouldn't be bad enough). What's it going to take to rid me of this instinct?

He got me a really hard kick right in the bottom of the kneecap once, ugly enough that I had to call uncle and lie down to writhe around in the grass in pain. I forgot to bring my jow, too. He poked and pressed at it a little... I'm not sure what he was doing; he seems too much of a straightforward science nerd to be into reiki or running chi... but after a few minutes I was able to get up and continue. It didn't bother me in BJJ class later,and now it feels just fine. (Relieved.... when it first connected, I thought, "%$^#! That's it for the day- maybe the next FEW days!")

We finished with some sticky-hands. Still feeling too much strain in the biceps, and a bit of elbow-flying... but much less elbow flying than I used to do, and I was doing well at keeping my shoulders relaxed and my form decent.

Really enjoyed that, despite the negative-emotion stirring and the whack in the knee. He will be visiting again in the winter, and hopefully we can do this again.

We worked from 9 to 11:30. I had brought my BJJ bag and could have just made it to lunchtime class, but I was too ravenous. I had to eat- and going straight to BJJ from lunch is asking to find yourself hurling in the alley before warmups are done. I had slept very poorly the night before, so found myself too lazy to get to the 4:30 basics class. I was less sorry about that when I got in at the tail end of it to see that it was just Ritchie, a brand-new humongo white belt, and another white belt that I've worked with a couple times before and I know is *WAY* too spazzy for me to work safely with.

So just competition class. Standing pass wherein you sort of slap the knees to the side and lunge past to KOB. This particular pass was one of the most difficult episodes *EVER* in regards to my "I can't tell my left from my right" disability. I remember trying to do this pass about a hundred times with Carlos standing there saying "wrong" every time because I kept reaching first with the wrong hand, stepping first with the wrong foot, or both. I felt a little bit of jelly-belly as soon as I saw the pass, but luckily I seem to have evolved since that bad episode- and I had no trouble with it. (Not so the big white belt.... he got pushups for saying the s-word on the mat...)

Then the same pass to KOB, transition to BOTH knees on belly, transition to front mount. Just to make it more challenging to maintain balance and control, we were to keep both hands on top of our heads like POW's. Marcello was looking at me with serious angst on his face. He's not that big, but seriously, I'm a tiny mouse. I told him, "Do this on my stomach, not my ribs." The bad rib area seems no worse and maybe a bit better in the last few days, but even so... my abs are pretty tough, I can take a guy up to medium-size kneeling on my belly if I gotta. He kept murmuring, "Are you all right?" Yeah, just stay off my ribs, and I'll live.

Then we added an escape to replace closed guard for the person on the bottom- the turn, comb the foot over, turn thing that Leslie and I were just talking about yesterday (she linked to a vid of Emily Kwok demo'ing it).  It's both Leslie's and my fave reaction to front mount, and it works very reliably. In this instance, after getting half guard and scooting out to the side, we were to push on opponent's far knee and stick our foot through to replace closed guard.  To my intense unhappiness, partners were switched and I was put with Ritchie. He's mostly okay with drills, but he's one of the very last people I want bouncing on both knees on my belly. I'd rather have Marcelo, for all Marcelo's probably twenty or thirty pounds heavier. Well, frame those elbows, cross your fingers and suck it up. He actually turned out to be okay. He had a little trouble combing my foot out.... my short legs make it more difficult for people to do this technique on me.

Prof finished us up a little early, with no positional sparring or free rolling- which was probably just as well, since Marcelo was the only person there (besides the prof himself) that I would have felt okay sparring with.

Dan was sitting on the wall waiting for the next class, so I asked him for a roll. I seemed competitive against him. He is short, but stocky. He got my back a couple of times, but I escaped. He set up a few chokes that came close, and one armbar that came close, but got no taps. I set up a triangle, which was at a poor angle and I knew immediately that I wouldn't be able to finish it. Yet since I almost never even try for triangles, I was happy that I had attempted to set one up at all. I also got the grab-the-backs-of-the-heels takedown- I kept in mind SIDE CONTROL's advice about the technical lift, and was ready to do it, but I didn't need it- somehow the momentum catapulted me directly into front mount with almost no effort on my part. 

More Wednesday

Without a mind reminding it of its limits, the body discovers new sources of energy.
 -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path


LOL.... I checked one of the local "kung fu" schools with my tai chi teacher, and got (in part):

"...but the combination of the rather overwrought tone of the site with the bullshit..."

My response: "I knew I could count on you for the straight scoop."


Wednesday evening gi class at Sleeper.

We did some very basic things, because one of the moms (whose kid is in the kids' class) was with us for the first time. Scissor sweep (add a cross collar choke for those who were not new), failed scissor sweep to technical lift (to omoplata for those of us who were *not* having our very first day); Then the new woman practiced basic guard break and two different guard passes on me while others played King Of the Hill.

Note that for that gi choke, you yank the lapel hard with the same-side hand before running the cross hand up it like zipping a zipper. Note that for the omoplata, you need to grab opponent's wrist with your near hand and roll over your NEAR shoulder (which felt exceedingly odd on the Stupid Side).

Rolls with everybody except Cindy and the new girl. By the time I got to Terry (last), everybody else was watching and trying to coach me. Note that Terry likes to try to fold me in half while in my closed guard, and Cindy wants me to try to backstroke out from under him.  I was getting really tired (and not a little discouraged... in particular with the way it seems I can't prevent being swept and put on the bottom anytime the opponent wants), but they all kept chivvying me to keep moving and do this and do that, so I really pushed.


CK told me today that CN is moving to Boston imminently. I'm bummed. I haven't seen him regularly for about 3 years now, and not at all for about a year and a half, but I'm fond of him and he's a great teacher.... I'd always held out hope that he might teach again someday. Now I'm never going to see him again. Sigh.

Cream puff buffalo

In order to resist [suffering] for a long time, we have to be able to move the mind somewhere else. Beyond the body, beyond the sharp teeth of Pain. We can keep on suffering stoically….. or we can use it to learn to move our consciousness at will. Pain and fatigue exhaust the body until the rational mind, not the least intrigued by all of this, decides to take off and leave us free to explore other states of consciousness. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path

130.5
Although I had planned to get back down to 124 this fall, the last few weeks have been poor in the eating-sanely department. I have been really struggling with some depression, and feeling a strong urge to carb-load which I didn't seem to have the strength to fight too hard. Somebody left a packet of Saltines in the break room at work, and like an idiot I snarfed them, and that precipitated a bit of a cracker binge (crackers have dramatic expansion effects on my weight). My reaction to the "mock tournament" made me have serious doubts about competing again this fall/winter, and staying in my bracket is a good way for me to be disciplined about my weight... so that incentive wavered. Anyway, I bought some more eggs and chicken breasts this week, and I'm back down to 130.5, which is good.

Was planning on going back to Sleeper on Saturday, but I didn't have time to do both that and hit the bloodmobile. I was going to skip the bloodmobile, but then they e-mailed me while I was getting dressed for class and were whining that they'd only had 6 people so far- so I went and got harpooned.

Monday Form Of the Day: Plum Blossom Fist.

I think I know how to kill the giant constrictor.
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Tuesday FOD: Jian form.

I stumbled on a link to a kung fu school and just spent a couple of minutes scrolling over pics of the students in class.... geez. I really, really, really miss Kung Fu.

My knees did not like Kung Fu much. I am already paying tuition at three gyms and don't have unlimited money.  It's not like I can't keep plenty busy with Jiu jitsu- and there's Muay Thai and capoeira available at Gracie's, both of which are intriguing.... but the balance of training jiu jitsu and kung fu was really nice. I miss striking, kicking, forms; I miss the focus on spirituality instead of on sport, I miss being able to discuss the "energy" of a movement without having people look at you like you just grew antlers.

Besides the time and money and commute and knees and divided focus and everything, the biggest barrier has been that I really connected with what was being studied by my previous group, and I had the most incredible teacher. I'm so sure that trying to do something else- with someone else- is going to feel like eating carob when what you really want is chocolate. It's just never going to cut it, and will make you miss chocolate even more. But today I find myself wondering, again. Loss of chocolate has been so painful that I haven't been able to consider trying to face carob. Could I really face trying carob and not be destroyed?
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Wednesday lunchtime BJJ at GB Sea.

Carlos seems to have been heartily inspired by the cardio blitz last weekend- so much so that he has decided to make a full week of it. Today we spent almost the entire class doing many of the same cardio exercises that we did last Friday. I was dragging, but we all were (except Carlos). We ended with iron buffalos. I was feeling sorta like a cream-puff buffalo by then, myself.....

Then that same single-leg takedown... only this time, you make two prelim entries during which your partner stiff-arms you. On #3, you let go of the sleeve and grab your own ear, rotate that elbow around partner's arm (this breaks hir grip)- then you can go for either the single leg or take the back instead.

From bottom side control: Place your top hand on partner's shoulder (you may need to rotate your elbow up and around to accomplish this). Bridge toward hir, and as you come down, use the little hole of space to get your other hand up by the first one. Turn a little toward opponent and wedge your top knee in right under hir armpit. If the knee is too low, you won't have as much leverage for the next move. (Resist the urge to try to make too much space before or during this- if you do, it straightens your arm and invites an armbar. It also makes a world of room for the opponent to reach in and cross-collar choke you.)

Next, bring your other leg overtop of opponent's head. S/he will think you're going for the armbar, and s/he will posture and pull the arm out. Go with hir and replace guard.

I found this technique- which I had never seen before- quite intriguing. I am always looking for an effective way to get out of bottom side control- and my short legs may prove to be beneficial with this particular move. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to drill it nearly enough.

After a session like that, it's very tempting to head for the locker room- especially if you plan to do more classes later the same day. I made myself stay and do a roll with Dominick and one with Marc.

Dominick tried to get me with the handful-of-the-back-of-the-gi-shoulder choke!! No way! After he gave up, I said, "That's my favorite choke." He laughed and said, "I could tell by the way you defended it that either you do it, or you've had it done to you." Then he got me with an armbar, using the very same tip of the body toward the head to pry off my defense that Eric showed me last week. Has this guy got a secret videocam set up at Sleeper?!?

Marc let me get a KOB, and I started bouncing on him. The next few times, he shoved me off quick. I said, "Nobody's EVER going to get you with this at a comp!"


Funny search term of the week: someone found my blog by searching on "aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgh"

"Relaxed Jiu jitsu"

So often I have witnessed things I would never have believed possible that I am more than willing to keep my mind open to the idea that our bodies are home to forces that we don’t fully comprehend. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path

Friday evening no-gi at Sleeper. Still punishingly hot. It was good to not be wearing a heavy coat and long pants, but the tradeoff is that you're working in an ocean of sweat. We kept moving around on the mat to find a spot that wasn't a skating rink of sweat, but it was a losing battle.

I had been noticing during the cardio this morning at GB that that rear high right side rib injury is definitely- well, THERE. It doesn't seem serious, but it's making me anxious that it's right in the same spot as that really bad one last year that sent me to the chiropractor (thousands of $, no insurance) and kept me off the mat for several weeks. My tai chi teacher  poked around in there last time she was here, and felt strongly that all the parts were not in their proper places. I'm going to be really careful of this for a while. Tonight I told everybody repeatedly that I have a rib injury, and to please be nice. They all were, although one new gal dived into side control once and kneed me right in the spot. **OW**.

I was sluggish in warmups.

Then a little basic guard break and backing out, breakdance pass to side control.

Sparring. I was in my typical form, trapped on the bottom and ineffectual. Terry seems to have made it a personal mission to try to poke and prod me out of my attitude problem. He is always on my case. He kept ragging me to keep moving, be faster, be more aggressive. As I observed the other day, I do continue to set up subs (and everything else) too slowly. After he goaded me a while, I rushed in on him and guillotined him off the handshake. Then I got that head-and-arm choke from side control (and remembered this time to hop off the other side to finish it).

Any claim of "I'm done for the night" continues to hold no water around here. They all taunted me back on the mat for another few rounds. Lamont continues to ride me hard in both senses of the word. I feel like they are all ganging up one me to try to punch me through this attitude hurdle. It's probably a good thing, but this type of change is never fun or easy. I know that Cindy is frustrated with people who cry on the mat- and while I have never cried on the mat (even when badly injured), I'm sure she is displeased with my attitude- I would like to not disappoint her.

I wonder how I can reconcile ramping up the speed and aggression with trying to pace myself so that I don't collapse 15 min into class. I may have taken the whole "relaxed jiu jitsu" thing too far.

By the time I got home from class (by the time I left, actually), I was ill. Headache, nausea, chills/sweats. Not sure if it was the heat (I was drinking plenty of water), overextending myself too much, menstrual cramps (you'd think all that frickin' cardio would have headed those off), something I ate or didn't eat (I had the single egg on the way to class, but was feeling hypoglycemic and drained halfway through)..... but I had to drag myself home, chug some Pepto Bismol and pop ibuprofin, and lie in the tub (first cool, then hot) till after midnight.

Polled Mythic Scribes to see if anyone has any cute ideas for killing the giant constrictor. 

Next time, I'll bounce

My definition of impossible has been overrun by external events so often as to take away from me any certainty regarding what is possible and what is not. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path

Okay, I challenge anyone to watch this without laughing. One of Cindy's littlest kids vs PROFESSOR CARLOS!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQOgkOmE2oU

WIP: I figured out what to do with the missing piece of that one scene. Enter GIANT CONSTRICTOR!!! Yes, my protagonist is currently battling a giant constrictor. Unfortunately for me, this involves research in the form of watching videos of boas and ball pythons devouring helpless cute little mice, rats, and (gulp) a baby bunny. Coulda done without that... but I don't want to describe unrealistic snake attacks. Fortunately for my protagonist, she is far from helpless, and she definitely has more weaponry on her person than your average baby bunny. Dayum, those snakes strike fast, though. And not mouth-first (or even head-first), which  foils my initial few ideas of how to kill it. I haven't figured out yet how she's going to take it out. She's good, though. And very highly motivated to kill this sucka. I trust her. She'll come up with something. 

Friday lunchtime BJJ at Gracie Sea. The prof from Yakima was there and brought a couple of his students, including a white belt woman with what Marc and I decided are "triangle legs". Long, long legs and arms- I'm jealous- she's going to be using those to her great advantage as soon as she gets a bit more experience.

Rolled a little with Vince before start of class. I *FINALLY* managed to tap someone with that thumb-in choke that I've been trying to get on everyone for the better part of a month. Thanks Vince.

Visiting prof led the class. Remember those 100 armbars from mount and 100 triangles from guard that I was whining about a few weeks ago? Man, that was nothing. We started with a lot of running (which is really hard for me because of my breathing issues). Followed by a lot of brutal new (to me) line drills; then we circled up and did about twenty Brazillion cardio exercises- crunches, pushups, all sorts of things. I was invoking both Jesus *and* Mary before we were done, and I'm not Christian. It was brutally hot again today, too.

You have guard. Double sleeve cuff grips, feet on hips, push out a tad. Spread knees and keep opponent's arms on the outside.  One foot on bicep as in spider guard, other foot swings around and up and then sockets under opponent's armpit. Opponent puts the other knee up. You grab hir elbow (on the same side that you have your foot in the pit), turn, and omoplata. I'm not really suave yet with the omoplata, and there were a lot of details in this one that zoomed over my head, so I think we're gonna have to come back to this later when I'm a little more seasoned. At least I knew enough this time to grab the guy's belt to hold him there while I was trying to sub him.
                                                                    
Same entry, but this time you take the foot that was in the pit and stick it under the thigh that the opponent put up. Sweep with a cartwheeling motion. Letting go and posting with one arm allows you to end in a very neat front mount. Subs from this position are legion, especially if you were good about keeping hold of that arm. Same "this is a little beyond my current level" feeling as far as considering trying this live, although I was pleased to have grokked the technique enough to be able to execute it the first time on my purple belt partner- who couldn't figure out how to do it. He called over the prof to get corrections, explaining, "She's too flexible, I can't get the tap." Prof did it on me and tapped me instantaneously, then fixed the guy's technique and replied, "She's not too flexible- you're doing it wrong."  (I kept a straight face.)

Positional training from closed guard, Angela. I can't be competitive with Angela, she is just too far above my skill- and I was feeling kind of helpless and apologetic. Sorry Angela.

One roll with the visiting woman. I tapped her instantly with my handful-of-the-back-of-the-shoulder choke, then told her how to defend, and tried for it a whole bunch more times while coaching her on how to stop me.

Little bit of rolling with Dave, who suggests focusing more on the technical lift. I had gotten him with the grab-the-backs-of-your-ankles takedown... which I get quite a bit- but as often happens, I was too slow and clumsy to follow up properly and get on top. He walked me through it and had me technical-lift, which worked much better than I expected it too. We seemed way too tangled up for that to work, but it did (I even posted on his leg). I was able to not only get up, but dive smoothly on top. Focusing more on trying to get this- and trying it even when it seems like I don't have enough room or free limbs- may be a way for me to try to stay off the bottom. If I can habituate this, it ought to work really well because of my short legs.

A roll with Marc, which is always a real pleasure. He seems to have legs EVERYWHERE while I'm trying to pass his open guard. I think he should exploit spider guard more; it seems like that would be a real strength for him. The fact that we haven't rolled together in a while showed when he let me get KOB and he just lay there under it. "Don't you start THAT again!" After he did it two more times, I said, "The next time you let me get that and keep it for three seconds, I'm going to start bouncing." Then he started shrimping the heck out of there immediately (or better yet, keeping me from getting the knee in there at all).                         

Jalen kicking butt at UGF last weekend... look how big he's getting...he seems to double his height every year... by spring he's going to be way bigger than me and we won't be very well-matched any more.  :(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5CtQAroQFc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Bjwq6iz3Sc&feature=youtube_gdata

"Avoid or reduce doing activities that are tiring, or take a lot of energy."

From an E-mail distributed by the King County The Regional Public Information Network (RPIN) today:
"Even young and healthy individuals can suffer in heat if they participate in strenuous physical activities during hot weather.
Avoid or reduce doing activities that are tiring, or take a lot of energy."
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Ha.
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Class #2: All spars.

There was a new medium-sized blue belt that I've never seen before. He didn't seem all that thrilled to work with me, but he was a good opponent.  Ben. Ritchie (sigh). Adrian (he was really nice about not muscling, which is good, because he is a HUGE purple belt). The big white belt cop that I was teaching a little on his very first day two or three weeks ago.

When I went with the cop, I reminded him to be careful with me- he's really big and he is also kind of spazzy. The spazz seems to be getting a little better, although he did slam on one armbar a little faster than I liked. I gave him the Serious Talk about putting his subs on carefully (especially ones like that). I also chided him for not having an inhaler (Honestly... I think any asthmatic who comes to do jiu jitsu without an inhaler needs a brain scan... as in, do you have one? You could DIE! And on a roasting day like today.) He's really loving BJJ so far, though. He says it's the best workout he's ever done. I think he's got one of his kids in here too.

I got him with Cindy's choke- the one where you get one deep cross collar grip and then grab a handful of the gi at the back of the other shoulder. He actually let out a little shriek of dismayed surprise when I socked it in. People (especially white belts) just do not see the choke coming because that second grip is so weird. I don't think it's in the GB curriculum, either. It is definitely one of my money-sub trinity (along with the keylock from the top and the guillotine from the start or from standup). Was wondering on the way home about trying to slip that guillotine in more often. I tend to only go for it right off the handshake, but I wonder if I could find more opportunities for it. Everyone I have worked with more than once or twice already knows about my guillotine fetish, and they know what they have to do to defend it.   :(

For the last two or three weeks, I've been trying to get that choke that Carlos showed us, where you get the first cross-collargrip and then stick your thumb in beside it and then slide it around. I've tried it on a whole bunch of people (including Carlos), but I don't think I've been in advantageous positions to finish it. I'm also still taking way too long to set up my chokes (to set up everything, in fact).


Meanwhile, the kids' class was not having class, per se- they were having a water balloon fight. I was kind of bummed that the adults didn't get to have one too. However, the cleanup did give us an extra interval of rest between classes. I also didn't mind lying there on the floor and watching men sweeping and mopping. That's a sight that the world could use more of. Like hippocampi. And almost as rare.

Class #3: all spars, although John and I started with several reps of the KOB and kimura drills from this morning. Then I sparred him, Hedge, and then An- the latter being a 3 or 4 stripe white belt that I've never worked with before. He turned out to be a great partner- he used almost no muscle, and he's medium-sized... this combined with our relative experience levels meant we were pretty evenly matched. I tapped him a couple of times (chokes, although neither of the ones discussed above).

Class #4: Uh, nope, not today. But lots of good training today nonetheless.