If no one sees it...

So my title refers to a magical moment during training last night.  But I'll set the stage-- I did attend the on-ramp class and learned some fundamental stuff about escaping the back that I never knew before... the kind of stuff that leaves you facepalming and wondering how it was you never thought of this.  I had a great drilling partner for this and it went well except for the monster mosquitoes (I smashed two on the mat, and later D was like whoa, who's bleeding? nope, just biohazard corpses.)

Then, the bigger/higher ranked people went to one side of the room to assist 3 MMA fighters who have fights in the near future.

The medium-sized medium belts got grouped together.

Us smaller folk got split into two groups, to help our two teammates who are prepping for Worlds.  A group of 7 guys, all blues and purples, helping a blue belt lightweight killer, and then a super-technical smaller bluebelt and I were targets for our super-feather blue belt.  Nonstop 3 minute rounds for her, and she wore us into the mat. 

When she finally wanted a breather, he and I went at it. And here was the magical moment... I was kind of playing "zero gravity jiu jitsu"-- for me this means the kind of jiu jitsu where you're more focused on the relationship between your body and theirs, and you forget which way is up.  When this happens it's a BIG leap forwards for me, because it means I don't let the mat get in my way-- I find a way to roll over a shoulder or come up underneath myself or go underneath them or something like that.  People who play a lot of inverted guard will think this is the most obvious thing in the world, but believe me, it's taken a LONG time for me to get here and when it blossoms on occasion, it's just awesomeness for me.  So anyway I forget exactly where I was when it happened, I was probably trying to stave off a guard pass for far too long, was probably fully on my side facing him with my knees jammed together, and somehow, with the grips I had (belt and knee? maybe a cuff, under my own leg?) I got my shin in there and humped my hips and I swear it was the kind of shin sweep that makes the angels sing, because I went from "ohshitohcrapI'mpassedhe'spassedI'mscrewed" to "I'mincrosssidewoo!"  And of course we kept on rolling and the angels quit singing while they watched me butcher things, attempt to muscle things, and generally spazz... but when we were done, the glory of that shin sweep stayed with me.

And then I wondered-- if you shin sweep and no one sees it, did it really happen?

Now that I'm thinking about shin sweeps... this video from Jason Scully doesn't show whatever random cobbled-together thing I did, but it's still got some good stuff.  I know I use something similar to escape from technical mount.  Definitely some good ideas and food for thought in here.



Happy Hump Day :)