Summer weekend...

This morning I bounced wide awake at 4:50am (a full ten minutes before my alarm would have gone off, had I set one, which I hadn't..) and then tried to get back to sleep.

Eventually, I gave up and checked email, read a book for a while, and took a shower. Dropped off a harddrive in the mail for my buddy Pete in DC (it's arriving Monday!) and arrived at the academy just in time to miss some of Giberson's infamous "little warmups." We do "little" ones when it's hot out. In cooler weather, 1000 crunches and 100+ pushups will be interspersed with ridiculous drills, rolls, and cardio that takes an hour. In the hot weather, we usually take things a little easier though still for a solid hour. I can handle things pretty well except wallstands.

In a wallstand, you put your hands on the mat about 2-3' from the wall, then prop the balls of your feet up about 3-4' up the wall from the ground, and make your back flat from shoulders to feet. Just when that becomes unbearable, he calls "heels to the wall" in which case you flatten your feet to the wall and raise your hips. You think that's restful for about 30 seconds fewer than you have to hold that position. And back. And forth. 'Till your delts are exploding like popcorn, your lower back is thrumming like a live electrical wire, and you pant like a dog in the sun. Don't forget this is in full gi and it's 90something in there, with 90% humidity and no breeze. Somehow it makes me deeply happy when big tough wanna-be MMA fighters come in to take their first class and end up puking on the back patio halfway through a warmup. Granted, I do break a sweat, and usually get my heartrate up to 90ish (resting rate is upper 50s) but I have never gotten queasy. Nyah nyah.

Anyhoo, then we did positional sparring, then technique (all closed guard breaks) and then we divided into weight classes for more positional sparring. Yay, in my group we had a 12 yr old boy who weighs 80 lbs, so I could have swept him at will. Found out after class from his mom Heather that his dad will be off to Afghanistan at the end of August. Felt really badly for them, they looked so sad to say it.. hopefully I can get her in training too. Give her something to focus on, and a new family support network, too.

Had one good roll with a purple belt, Lee... felt like my guard passes were tighter, my halfguard passing especially, and had good shoulder pressure, and had two entertaining armbar setups at the end, one of which he allowed me to nail in kind of a sitting-on-his-shoulder-hip-forward-belly-down way. Wooo!

But then sadness, my friend Amit took his last class before moving home to Sugarland where he'll be training at Leo Xavier's (lucky) and saving money (lucky.) I will really miss him. He's a big strong brute, but always reserved his playful, experimental, not smashy side for rolls with me. He also managed to consistently make me feel genuinely helpful for him and his development, which is something I crave. I just want to be a good partner for my friends, to be useful and not a burden.

Had lunch after, at Hoover's, with Spencer my judo tutor and his fabulous wife Sharla. (She'll be bellydancing tonight at a Greek restaurant so I'll see how the hubby feels about venturing out as moral support.) Hoover's makes delectable Southern comfort foods like smothered pork chops, green beans with onions and bacon, chicken fried steak, fried okra. I picked the green chile-cheese-poblano burger this time (boo, I didn't care for the smoky flavors) and green beans. Now I'm stuffed and drowsy on the couch.

Lunchtime open mat..

Rolled with two people today at lunch open mat and wore myself to a frazzle in the first 40 min. My first partner was a whitebelt, maybe 8" taller and 30ish pounds heavier. I was decently happy with how I did against him, especially because I was focused on playing my guard as much as I could. As a result, ironically, my guard passing was doing better. Even Christy commented on that, which was nice. I think I got him a couple times, and he got me with an Americana. Eventually we quit and chatted a bit. How sad is it when you finish a roll and your partner asks if he's getting written up! So I offered him the opportunity to pick his "stage name." He offered Mr. Blah. Nope. So, now he's No-Name. :)

Then I rolled with Anthony, a blue belt and a dear friend of mine. He about trounced me, but made it sound better when we finished by praising my toughness. :) Go hedgehog!

Work is picking up the pace, have lots of deadlines to worry about, but had no motivation this afternoon. After I saw a friend off to the airport, I stared at the computer screen blankly. Spent a lot of time meditating on the meaning of life and pondering my place in it. Finally shook off the malaise and went home, skipping evening open mat, and grilled chicken and corn on the cob for dinner. I had no appetite to eat, but I did anyway.

Really looking forward to losing myself in jits tomorrow. But in conversation tonight, my husband told me I'm married to jits. Maybe he has a point.

Last weekend's festivities

Saturday night I went out to help Zade, one of my teammates (here on the far right,) celebrate his birthday. We had lots of lovely champagne which encouraged us all to dance. Fortunately, no photos of the dancing.





Jackie, another one of my teammates..



And Marc, one of my favorite training partners.



Then Sunday after class, we had a pool party/BBQ. Of course, the obligatory water-jits ensued. Here's Joseph-- maybe trying a swimming-armbar on Juan?







Me and Jackie..



It was perfect weather. Hot and sunny most of the time, but with a few threatening clouds and two brief spits of very light rain that brought in a nice breeze and cooler air.





Filip, Joseph and Vidush.





Joseph's wife Susan, Joy, and Filip.





Leila didn't swim because of her neck brace but it was GREAT to see her out and about again. We're all hoping for a 100% recovery!





Catherine, and my friend Leslie who works with me.



Mark, a purple belt in Dallas under Marcelo Garcia and author of The Bat Dojo.





It was a potluck BBQ and people brought a ton of food.



My husband Mitch.



Vidush, Chuck and Filip.



My college, law school, and post-law school roommate and dear friend Kelly.

















It was a wonderful weekend. :)

Mai tai...

Not the fake one with the pineapple juice and maraschino cherries.. but the real deal-it traces back to Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron Jr. in the 1930s. Orgeat is an almond-sugar syrup traditionally made from whole blanched almonds. The nut oil gives the syrup (and cocktails made with it) a richness that can’t be duplicated with a cheap syrup made with almond flavoring and sugar. Find it in a well-appointed liquor store or gourmet food store.



TIME/SERVINGS
Total Time: 5 mins
Active Time: 5 mins
Makes: 1 drink

INGREDIENTS
2 ounces aged rum
3/4 ounce freshly squeezed lime juice, juiced lime half reserved
1/2 ounce orange curaçao
1/4 ounce Rich Simple Syrup, also known as rock candy syrup
1/4 ounce orgeat
1 cup crushed ice
1 mint sprig, for garnish

INSTRUCTIONS

Combine all ingredients except the mint sprig in a cocktail shaker, shake vigorously, and pour the entire contents into a double Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with the juiced lime half and a mint sprig.

So much new stuff!!!!

My head's busting open with nifty new stuff to work on (as well as old stuff of course.)

Last night, got my judo on with Spencer. Spencer's just about the nicest person you could imagine. By trade he is a massage therapist but he's also a brown belt in judo under his dad, whose blackbelt is so old and frayed there's hardly any black threads left around the white core. Soooo, we worked on my steering wheel foot sweep from my retarded side... the two seoi nages that work for me.. a followup to a failed seoi nage.. 3 versions of the tomoe nage... it was all fun.

Then this morning, Max taught. He's a purple from LA under Octavio Couto, in town for the summer, and he has such a different style from us. I love it. We covered 3 passes for the sit up guard, then what I think of as the beginning and end of a choke series that brackets a choke Max taught me a couple weeks ago, from N/S turtle. Most of the time when I have to do rolling chokes or anything that involves substituting up and down or one side and the other, I just flail and screw it up. Somehow, someway, this choke series makes sense to my brain, and I love it. Dunno if I'll ever fully land it, but I have been trying for the center piece ever since, and I'm looking forward to trying it on some unsuspecting whitebelt soon in a theater near me.

Then at lunch, I drilled and rolled with a new whitebelt guy who is so super sweet. And a redhead. I actually felt like I had a closed guard offense for once, mainly because he's really slim as well so it wasn't a struggle to lock my guard. I was quite proud-- some triangles, armbars, a near omoplata, a cross collar choke, two back takes, two pendulum sweeps, a near whitebelt killers and a near kimura. Of course he got a couple near passes too!

All good stuff.

:)

The purpose of rolling. And tapping.

If you haven't read Dev's post on this issue, stop what you're doing right now and get on it. It's much more thoughtfully-expressed than what I have been stewing over!

I just wanted to share some reflections on the topic. For reference you may want to read Allie's post which brought this all up... especially the comments afterwards.

The welcome thing: we only have an informal, rarely-discussed, unnamed thing like this, and it only comes out when a spaz does something unacceptable.

For example: I got a massive neck stinger from a whitebelt guy jamming my head into the wall (he launched forward with me on his back, about 18" from the wall, with my arms trapped in a seatbelt grip) once... a couple min later, one of our smooth, polished (bigger, male) purples asked him to roll. He elegantly, methodically tapped the guy with one sub per joint, top to bottom, down one side and then the other, within about 6 min. No exertion, just looked like a nice flow roll. It was so professionally done that I didn't even realize till later that it was the unspoken way our school looks out for its own... especially its own girls, smaller people, older people, etc. And of course I learned that if my head had been in the proper position, I wouldn't have been injured by his forward roll, so that was good to learn.

But as far as routinely attacking and "humbling" people when they walk in, no way.

As for the norm in terms of popping stubborn tappers.. I can only tell you what I have personally heard of and experienced.

I have trained at 4 different schools in California (Ralph Gracie Berkeley (Eduardo Fraga), Bay Jiu Jitsu (Stephan Goyne), 10th PJJ SF (Denny Prokopos) and New Breed (Johnny Ramirez, Cristian, John Ouano, Val Worthington)), tons of schools in Texas and have discussed this issue with people all over the US and the world, including (in the last several weeks) Thailand, Ireland, England, France, Mexico, India, China, and Paraguay.

I have NEVER heard anyone, ever advocate that stubborn tappers should be popped whilst training.

Maybe I'm overdramatizing it but I don't think so. You might think that "just an elbow pop" is no biggie, but I'd rather roll with control and pass on a tap than stop someone from training for even a week. Why not? What's the advantage to me of forcing them to tap? Isn't the WHOLE POINT OF TAPPING the AVOIDANCE OF INJURY!? Geez oh pete-- hurting someone to make them tap so they don't get hurt is like hitting a kid to show them you don't hit.

I know that you love this like I love this (if you're reading this blog I bet I'm right!) and that to take time off, whether a couple days for a popped elbow or 6 months off for ACL surgery, would really hack us off, especially if we thought we got popped too hard, too soon (and wouldn't we all, for the most part?)

And for me, closer to home: Leila's neck is amazingly good considering it was broken less than a month ago. She was LUCKY. If the (bigger, stronger) whitebelt guy had been going fractionally harder or faster, who knows what would have happened to her spinal cord. And they weren't doing anything terribly scary-- "it was just a stack pass." If our academy permitted people to roll like it was a fight, to "test" themselves... she could be a paraplegic from C5 down. Or dead.

It is our explicit policy to "train today so you can train tomorrow" (not "next week after you ice it" dammit) (not "If this were a fight, how quickly could I end the match? Tap him. Go hard. If he doesn't tap, pop his elbow") that makes me comfortable rolling with almost anyone at my school, once I see they've been there long enough to lose spazhood status. If my instructor's explicit advice to me was anything otherwise, I would bolt through the door and never return.

And this whitebelts/heelhooks thing. Ahem.

You're going to be doing jiu jitsu for years! YOU DO NOT NEED TO LEARN HOW TO ESCAPE AND PERFORM EVERY SUBMISSION IN YOUR FIRST TWO YEARS. Leave the more dangerous ones for later.

Sorry for shouting. Just had to get that off my chest.

Edit: Here's Allie's great follow-up post.

Passing guard.

I owe a big long post of my weekend, but having driver issues between my netbook (which runs ubuntu) and my camera's memory card. Fortunately my friend Mark set the netbook up with an alternate boot option (windows, which does see the card) so I will get those pictures up tonight, after competition class (assuming I'm not completely destroyed, which I might be.)

Suffice it to say, it was a really lovely weekend, between helping my friend Zade celebrate his birthday and the pool party/BBQ on Sunday.. however, I did burn the candle at both ends and the middle in terms of getting less than enough sleep. Sooo...

Monday morning Vidush, Mark and I hit the mats for some training, and I was like a noodle. It was an almost-out-of-body experience for me. We didn't roll (Mark had a back injury flare up) but he was able to walk me through a variety of guard passes (and some submissions too) which were very appealing to me. I haven't trained since, but hope to apply them this evening.

Donald once told us that passing guard can be summarized as one of three basic techniques: stretch them out, ball them up, or corkscrew them. I find I get in trouble most when I ball them up, but Mark and Vidush did some tweaks to my halfguard posture and position that made even my ball-up moment there feel safer.

It's grey outside and though I got almost eight hours of sleep last night, I still feel a little slow.

I'm crazy.

I've been dealing with a personal challenge lately, outside of but I guess somewhat related to jiu jitsu. In a very short amount of time, I've gone all over the emotional map (except anger) and it's left me feeling wrung out and fatigued. At one point I was so happy that I wished for more smiley faces to express my degrees and flavors of the expression, like the Eskimo have so many words for 'snow.' And at another, I was tearing up and lamenting my stupid, stupid heart. But I think I see the light and with the love and help of my friends, it's going to be back to normal soon. Not that I want normal. The crazy thing is, while I was in lala-land, I loved it.

Then I got these pictures from my friend Dan and it cheered me up quite a lot.

Because Monday mornings aren't as funny as they could be...

Liam's posted an article on BJJ and self-defense on his blog the Part Time Grappler, but I had to share this picture from it with you. Made me laugh on this very early, very dark Monday morning.

Hopefully I can upload pictures from this weekend's festivities and share with you a little later. Happy Monday, hope you get a little giggle somewhere.

Congrats Dev!!!

GOLD MEDAL AT MASTERS' WORLDS!!!



And then BRONZE in the absolute! He lost to the gold medalist in the ultraheavy division (Dev's only a middleweight.)

Way to go, World Champion :)