Two guys and a strap

Words create sentences, sentences create paragraphs, sometimes  paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe. Imagine, if you like, Frankenstein's monster on its slab. Here comes lightning- not from the sky, but from a humble paragraph of English words. Maybe it's the first really good paragraph you ever wrote, something so fragile and yet full of possibility that you are frightened. You feel as Victor Frankenstein must have when the dead conglomeration of sewn-together spare parts suddenly opened its watery yellow eyes. _Oh my God, it's breathing,_ you realize. _Maybe it's even thinking. What in hell's name do I do next?_
-Stephen King


Wednesday: power lifting.

A new washer and dryer have been installed. The old washer was supposed to have been left in the entryway by the movers, so that it could be taken to the storage unit. Imagine my surprise when I arrive to find it sitting outside on the deck in the rain.

Kitsune: ((In dismay))"Why is it outside?"
Housemate: "I dunno."
Kitsune: ((exasperated wordless stare))
Housemate: "It took two guys and a strap to move it."
{translation: "Don't even ask me to help try to move it"}

So I moved it myself. If it took two guys and a strap, maybe I'm in the wrong line of work.
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WIP: I edited my posted sections and removed a crap ton of "passive" language. I didn't really realize how bad I am about that. At this point, trying to change that aspect of my writing during the process is going to cripple me to an even slower crawl than I'm already at.... so the plan is to do a focused first and second edit just for that. First edit: eliminate most of the was'es. Second edit: look for more instances of passive writing- but it looks like about 70% of my crime is the dreaded WAS.

I still have way too many had's. I don't know how to fix that.

While I was at it, I also found several more little extraneous bits that didn't seem to add to the narrative, so I chopped them.
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Lunchtime BJJ, GB Belle.  Today I got kimura'ed by a Pan Ams medalist!

Opponent on hir back with feet in your hips, you standing. Pass guard to KOB. Opponent pushes at your knee. You kimura.

Notes for me: Grab the wrist with all fingers and thumb together. I keep wanting to have the thumb on the other side- which increases chance of injury (to me) as well as makes me slower (since I now have to readjust my grip before I can complete the technique). Furthermore, having my thumb on the other side does not do anything for me anyway (do I really think I'm going to be able to hold hir there like that?)

Also: Move further down on the opponent's body and try to pin hir with the knees before beginning to crank the arm. Hold the arm up higher and pressed against my chest- but don't pull it so high that that elbow is not bent sufficiantly. Turn my torso- don't just push with the arms.

Next: same setup, only instead of kimura, finish with an armbar. One foot behind opponent's shoulder blade; pants grip. DON'T LET GO OF THE PANTS!!!!! (Yep, I'm still doing it)

Three spars, three minutes each, different partners. Begin sitting back to back.

I notice that I am getting faster at setting up the Del a Riva guard- I have to think about it less- even though I was not able to finish it this time.

I also noticed some things that I was not bothering to try because the defeatist in me just assumed that they would not work.  This is nothing new... but it is something that needs to be fixed, so noticing it is good.

Angela vs Sijara Eubanks

John medals

John, silver medalist! Whoo-hoo!

Cross collar chokes from mount

The road to hell is paved with adverbs. To put it another way, they're like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day... fifty the day after that… and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is TOTALLY, COMPLETELY and PROFLIGATELY covered with dandelions. -Stephen King


My ineffectual rolls on Friday night were interspered with enough frustrated fruitless straining that I twinged not only my old right-upper-rear rib injury, but a twin on the other side. It's not that bad, just a dull ache, and it's difficult to find a comfy sleeping position. That right upper rear thing is going to be with me till death, I think. There must be a big honkin' knot of scar tissue in there. It feels like lying on a lead tennis ball at night.

Lunchtime BJJ, GB Belle.  Many of our teachers and coaches are away for Pans all week, so Aussie Dave was coaching.

Cross collar choke from mount. It is easier to take a low lapel grip and then slide it up. Sauleh suggests a Leopard Fist (he didn't call it that, but that's what it was) lying on the guy's ribs, the sliding up under the lapel. If you're having trouble getting it all the way up there, brace your elbow on your belly and lean forward to use your weight to force it in there. (Sauleh is a small guy... these little tricks are part of the reason I'm totally annoyed that he won't work with me. But I guess verbal instruction is better than nothing.) Press your elbow to the opponent's breastbone. Post with your other hand, on the same side of the guy's head. Slowly crawl your posting hand to the other side, watching your balance. Use your elbow to press the opponent's face so that s/he's looking at your first grip. Now you have room to insert the second grip. The second hand goes in thumb inside, palm down. If you can't get it in there, you may still be able to finish by grabbing a handful of gi at hir shoulder (my most high-percentage choke), or even just the shoulder itself- If you can keep hir head and shoulder pinned, you can make it happen with the pressure from the first grip hand.

More options: try to slide your knee up so that it's under the shoulder blade on the side that you have the first grip. Leave the second leg where it is, or use S mount. Now, if s/he tries to bridge away from you, s/he is handing you the armbar. If s/he tries to bridge into you, s/he is exposing more neck for you to slide that 2nd choke grip in.

I was drilling with Donkey Kong. He has 4 stripes now. Still having a little trouble being a good partner. He said all the right things, went too gentle at first, then when I reassured him, he overcorrected and started going too hard. 

The higher my rank climbs, the more I find myself feeling some kind of responsibility to attempt to retrain people who don't know how to be a good partner. When I was a stale white and fresh blue, I just said to myelf, "I'm simply going to avoid working with white belts below three stripes, and also this list of rough guys above that rank," Now I think, "What if this guy ends up rolling with Crisanne or Lindsey and injuring one of them.... I ought to roll with him and try to get him housebroken before he kills somebody who is more fragile than me." 

I'm also finding that the brand-newbies are usually easier to train. Once they get three or four stripes on their white belts, they think they know everything. If a guy makes it to blue and is still being an asshole partner, it's very hard to fix him after that point (witness Hostility Boy).

There is a cadre of high whites/low blues at Bellevue that were working with me almost from their first week, and they really know how to drill and roll appropriately with a smaller person without being buttholes. The better partner you are, the better for your own progress as well as the safety and progress of everyone around you.

King Of the hill from front mount. Sucking on the bottom, although I can fend off the choke for a while. A bit better on top, although still can't reliably finish the choke, and armbar is worse (the guys bicep-curl right out of it). Still getting reversed too easily and too often, although having some limited sporatic success with S-mount.

A little story from PSG

 

 

 

There's no jiu jitsu in this. Names changed to protect the innocent.

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I was on the staff radio at an event, and the facilitator of a major evening drum-centric ritual had locked her keys in the car with all of her drums and other equipment in it.

She had a family member at home Fedex her the spare, and it was supposed to arrive "sometime" during that day.  If we were lucky. We were out in the middle of nowhere.

The rit was scheduled for 6pm, and she was semi-hysterical all day long.

She spent the entire morning and afternoon repeatedly calling staff up at the farmhouse and asking if her keys had arrived yet, and repeating with deadly earnestness, "PLEASE call the SECOND they get here. PLEASE. The very second. I really mean it. I'll send a runner up to get them. This is vitally important. PLEASE. Do you understand?" And tireless repetitive versions of same. (all the staff members have FRS radios on, and all campers in our vicinity can overhear them. Whatever you say on radio is going to be heard by every single staff member as well as about 2/3 of the general festival population. So we were all listening to this all day long.)

On approximately the eight-thousandth rep of her plea, one of the staff at the farmhouse responded, "Oh, yeah- your keys are here. Been here for a while. Want me to bring them down with me when I haul the dinner stuff down to the valley?"

There was dead silence on the radio for a very long, pregnant moment.

You could just feel the entire population of the valley (nearly 2,000 that year) hold its collective breath.

Now, you have to realize that the facilitator, Lou, is a drumming Fire Goddess with a volcanic temper and a positively acid tongue. I was sitting there alone in my tent with my radio, wheezing breathlessly with laughter because I was picturing all three hundred pounds, swirling red muumuu and wild arm-length afro hair of her, considering and discarding various responses and trying to come up with one that was okay to say over the air (again, most of the camp was listening, and anyone who knew Lou was holding their breath waiting for the violent shitstorm to unleash). The longer the silence stretched, the harder I was laughing.

A very, very long moment later, she finally said, in a very carefully neutral and quiet voice, "No, Fran, actually that's not okay. I'm sending someone up to get them right now."

Friday evening

…Without Constant Reader, you are just a voice quacking in the void. -Stephen King




Friday night no-gi at Sleeper.

SSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO tired. It really does work out better for me to skip lunchtime at GB when I'm going to go to Sleeper in the evening.  But I feel like I was actually helpful to Angela today in drills, even though I turned her down for sparring after. I want to be a good teammate to her, and help her out as much as I can.

Upa escape.

Then, straight-arm opponent's hips from mount and shove hir into butterfly guard. Sit up, underhook one side and put your arm around hir as if s/he is your buddy. Scoot butt out just a bit. Now your knee is up on the hugging side, and down on the mat on the other side.  Next: grab the opponent's arm so that s/he can't post, and roll hir, lifting with that butterfly hook. (You may also slide the matward knee under you and use it to drive off of.) End in front mount. (Sometimes I ended in side control, but Cindy advises mount.)

Next- same, only begin by elbow-escaping out from the mount before taking butterfly guard.

Sparring. I was very ineffectual tonight. Just too tired.  Wei got me in that same armpit choke that he's tapped me with for the last 4 classes in a row. I was watching for it (he did it to someone else a little earlier tonight), and he still got me.

Greedy Business

You need to distinguish between damage and distraction.
 If you let yourself get distracted, it works. And if it is novel, people tend to get distracted. -Rory Miller


Okay, I am TOTALLY, thoroughly and superbly pissed off.

I showed up today in my french vanilla gi. Carlos had said yesterday that the white one was okay. I was ready to say to Casey, "You happy now??!??" Well, he still wasn't happy. He says I can't even wear the white one. It's a white gi, with Gracie Barra patches all over it- but that's STILL not good enough. Because it is not a white gi with Gracie patches all over it that was bought from the Gracie Barra Evil Overlord Monopoly.

I am now down to *one* acceptable gi (WTF am I supposed to do when I take more than one class in a day? Wear it dirty? Wear it wet?) with an atrocious fit that I'm not sure can be altered- and even if it can, it's going to involve taking the big back patches off and then sewing them back on, which will cost a mint. If they think I'm ever going to compete in that thing, they're nuts.

ATM I am *way* too torqued off to even consider coughing up more money to the "You are not a student to us, just a dollar sign" GB  (the GB stands for "greedy business" in case you ever wondered) conglomerate. But even if I end up caving on this in the long run, I swear to Sweet Baby Jesus I will quit before I let them put me in one of those GB rashies- they are all made by MANTOS. Yes, the porno-ad company. I wouldn't take one of their products as a gift, and run around wearing the Mantos name on my body. Hell will freeze over first.

Did I mention that I'm really really irritated??!?  Seriously.
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Lunchtime BJJ, Greedy Business Sea.  Rolled a bit with Crisanne to warm up; had her do the upa. She seemed to have it down, so I started pressing her to do it faster- within three seconds of the mount.  Also rolled a bit with Casey, who is kissing up to me because he knows I'm annoyed (although I refrained from describing in depth to him exactly *HOW* annoyed), and doesn't want me to hate him.

Standup: Judo grips, Yank down on the lapel side while tapping sole of foot below knee, then yank down on sleeve side while stepping hip to hip and reaping. Setup only. 40 reps. "Relax" says Angela.

Shoulder throw, opponent's bicep locked between your bicep and forearm (NOT beside your neck). Make sure to turn the ENTIRE 180 degrees. My biggest challenge continues to be having the feet planted parallel between opponent's feet and close enough together. Today I was managing both turn and positioning, but with way too many little time-consuming adjustment steps. 40 reps.

Cross step, turn 180, kick back with the same foot you cross-stepped with, pull opponent over your leg for takedown. 40 reps.

Pass half guard: opponent on hir back, you standing at hir feet with one lapel grip and one leg cuff grip. With your trapped leg, push knee fwd into back of opponent's thigh. Then kick it back like a mule. Set it down beside opponent's ribs. Stick your other leg out. KOB. A million reps. (Well, maybe not a million, but it felt like a million)

Same setup, only after you pass half guard, opponent turn in to you. With the same leg that you were KOB'ing with, stick that one straight out back. Now place your shoulder on opponent and carwheel over to hir back. Do not at any point let go of those pants cuffs. Like the previous technique, once you are passed, your arms are in an X.

Angela is going to be fighting Sijara Eubanks again this year, it looks like. And she is excited about it! She has a great attitude.

22 people from GB Seattle are registered for PanAms. Last year it was only 10.