Girl jitsu!

I left work yesterday at 3 p.m. Got to Mechanicsville Martial Arts around 6:40 (class is at 6:30, oops!). But got changed and on the mats. I think half the people there were girls! The class was just timed rounds (or really more untimed — whenever Klint decided to call it).

Started with Lo. She has pressure — ohemgee, she has pressure. (Thank goodness she’s finally a blue belt. 😉 ) We started toward the end of one of the rounds, though we didn’t realize it, and just kept going when time was called.

Then I got to roll with Marie, a purple belt. I want to be like Marie when I grow up. She was just my size, and she was so smooth and technical. Things that I thought I knew how to do well, she just slid right through.

Then a round with Chrissy, who’s usually so busy organizing who all the girls roll with that she never gets to roll with us. I tried several things that didn’t work — mostly because I couldn’t remember them quite right — and also got distracted by her shiny patch because I couldn’t figure out what it said.

Then Amy, a 4-year-plan white belt who’s 98 lbs (that’s, er, 20+ less than me right now). I felt that I could completely overpower her and mash her if I wanted to, and that’s a really strange feeling for me as I’m never the smallest. Amy showed me a better grip and control from bottom z-guard — I always grab the far collar, as if controlling for a scissor sweep, but she showed me to grab the near collar and to use that across the throat, even driving your knuckles in to their windpipe, just enough for that uncomfortable moving-away. Big payoff for little effort. I need to learn more of those… or how to find that fulcrum in what I do know. (I think that might be what we call “jiu-jitsu”, hm….)

Then Marie again (I totally want to be like her. Just reiterating.), and finally Barbara, a white belt, who was fast and also had a lot of pressure. We talked at some point during the roll, and she said that the difference she’s noticed between white belts and blue belts is that blue belts start using their feet more as hands and get lots more hooks with their feet.

Out for pizza after, then back to Chrissy’s for the night. This morning is another open mat. Whee!