Jiu-jitsu: Make friends, then make them miserable

Whew, some crazy storms blowing through here! Watched a lightning storm over town on Saturday night, then was woken up at midnight last night by a thunderstorm blowing in. Everyone at work was having a rough time today, as none of us slept much all weekend.

BJJ, Fundamentals

Warmup. Knee will let me do the side-to-side drills facing in (so pushing off that knee) as long as I stay up really high. We had a new girl tonight, Shelby, who I’d met when she stopped in last Friday; helped her with the down-the-mat drills.

Drilling. Review of the bump sweep variation from last week. Then added going to the armbar once you get to mount. Worked with Shelby. She was nervous about putting her full weight on me, but I kept coaching her through how to put her weight on my ribs. She was amused that everything I told her to do was making me more miserable, and that when I couldn’t breathe, those were the times I told her she’d done well. Ah, jiu-jitsu, you so funny.

BJJ, Intermediate/Advanced

Rolling to warmup. Deziree, Buddy, and Big Jon. Lol, Jon choked me with my lapel, but when I tapped and he let go, the lapel didn’t go anywhere; it stayed there choking me.

Drilling was the double-under pass, then a variation for if you were lazy and left your elbows out and they grabbed your sleeve cuffs. Worked with Sara.

Rolling. Deziree pounced on me again, then Dmitri (who accidentally went to Lockdown in half guard and knee-barred the injured knee; I tapped as soon as I realized that I wasn’t getting out, so well before there was any pressure), Trey, and finally Guillaume, as I owed him a complete roll from last week. Thankfully, my knee behaved tonight and I didn’t have to stop.

Meh, weather says we’ll probably get another thunderstorm between midnight and 1am tonight. At least it looks like the wind won’t be so bad.

Getting the power back

Oi, vey! Hard to get back in the rhythm of going to class. So used to having nights that would be free so I’m used to scheduling errands and such. Then Aubrey’s parents & another couple came in to town on Thursday; I had dinner with them, then she headed off with them for a motorcycle ride to Michigan. And suddenly it was Friday and I hadn’t trained since Monday. Meh.

When I walked in last night, Tim asked me where I’d been and started listing the days I’d missed. He said “Wednesday?” I said that I don’t like getting punched in the face (since Wednesday is MMA class). He said, “6:30?” I said, “Huh?” Then he told me that there’s a new gi class on Wednesday nights after MMA. *Squee!!!* The more the gi, the more there’s a merrier me!

Nogi Fundamentals

I’m still slow on the warmups, but at least I can do them all. (Somehow, my right-shoulder forward rolls have broken. Like, awful. I dunno what that’s all about…). Straight in to drilling — bump sweep variation, then taking the back as an alternative. Drilled with Janet. (Have I mentioned lately how grateful I am for similarly-sized training partners? Seriously.)

While drilling the bump sweep variation, somewhere near the end of that time, I pushed and turned off my left knee and it screamed at me. Did it all sorts of wrong, apparently. So I stopped for a short while to stretch and massage it out. Mostly fine during the other one, though I was already smart enough not to push off it.

Fundamentals class wound down on drilling.

Nogi Intermediate/Advanced

Another warmup, though blessedly short as most of us were still warm from the last class. I was starting to run on fumes in the cardio department. I’ve been too long away from the mats; I got nothing. Then to drilling, nogi spider guard and then a nogi spider guard sweep (Justin’s favorite sweep — as soon as he said “nogi spider guard,” I knew we would end up at that sweep). Drilled with Janet again.

Then some rolling. First with Janet, then started with Guillaume. But while going to mount — to mount, for goodness’ sake! — I wrenched the knee again and had to pull out. I was tempted to ignore it and keep rolling anyway, but I’m trying to be less stupid. *le sigh*

But sitting means you get to people-watch, and I watched as one new guy got choked, then sat up rubbing his neck. When his partner asked if he was okay, he said, “Yeah, but I think you got my neck.” *gigglesnort*

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The lights started flickering last night, and I looked out to see dark clouds heading for us and the trees blowing in the wind. I mentioned to my brother that we were about to get a bad storm; he looked it up online and announced, “Winds up to 75 miles per hour” — and blam!, the winds hit the house the next moment.

I asked him to turn them off, but he couldn’t.

No rain, really, just lots and lots and lots of high velocity wind. Knocked the power out around 9pm. We stayed up listening to the storm and playing chess by candlelight. The wind finally died down around midnight, but the power stayed out until this morning around 10. It’s back now, though, and I’m actually relived for the air conditioning — temperatures are supposed to get into the high 90s today.

Home, sweet home

The academy opened in the new location tonight. Larger mats. Two doors, 3 ceiling fans. An office. One bathroom, but room to make changing areas. So nice!

(The only downside to the new location is that it’s in the next town over and on the far side of that town, which makes it impossible for me to get over for morning classes. Oh well.)

Fundamentals Class

Short warmup, though with so many people, kinda crazy. If the guy ahead of you had to pause in his jogging (because someone ahead of him paused), then there was a short pile-up as we ran in to each other. I managed to turn in for side-to-side and push off with the hurt knee!! (It helped that with so many people we had to go super slow anyway.) And I did alligators! Two trips! Still some twinges on things, but the knee sure did do a lot tonight. Wohoo!

Drilling: armbar from guard. Then added a sweep to that, and I had 2 stupid sides for most of it. Fantastic. Knew what to do, have done it before, but just couldn’t get it working.

BJJ, Intermediate/Advanced

The Salem crew came up tonight to help us break in the new place, so the number of folks on the mats increased between classes.

Brandon even came in for a little while. He and his wife had a baby last week, a little girl.

We lined up by rank again and bowed in, and then squished together for an academy picture.

Class started with rolling, though there were far too many of us to roll at once, so we rolled in shifts of 8 pairs. I got out there for 2 rolls.

Drilling was the sickle sweep and passing to side control. Knee was not excessively fond of that one either from attacking or being attacked.

Then I begged Ez from Salem for a roll. They were trying to leave, but he agreed to come out for one roll anyway. Wohoo! Not just because he’s a purple close enough to my size, but mostly because he always gives me lots of good advice about being the smaller person. And he did not disappoint tonight.

Tomorrow night will lead off with a kids’ class, so the adult schedule for the week actually looks the same as before (except that we don’t have to leave early and turn out the lights so the strange people can come in later). This is gonna be pretty awesome.

So much squee!

My face and neck feel — and look — like they’ve been rubbed with sandpaper.

My legs and arms have mat- and velcro-burns all over them.

I’ve had “choke cough” for a few hours.

I’ve been grinning for hours: I could drill and even roll tonight!!

Part of it was the technique — it didn’t involve much in the way of knees themselves. Justin had us build a sequence of kimura from guard, to guillotine, to crucifix sweep. My knee only twinged a few times, and that’s because I’d plant the toe to pop my hips. Did not like.

Heh, being choked was… weird. As soon as there was any pressure, I was ready to tap, but I tried to tough it out until my partners could actually do it.

I watched everyone roll once while I kept the knee moving. It seemed to be feeling okay, so after the round I went over to Guillaume to see what I could do. We didn’t roll for long — maybe 5 minutes — and I did have to stop and shift a few times or rescue my leg from a position that was getting uncomfortable, but it was rolling!! I went for the sequence from class because it was there; he stuffed it and teased that he wouldn’t let me get what we just did. But then a minute or so later, from a slightly different setup, I hit that crucifix sweep anyway. (I admit, I did tease him back, lol.)

Also, I have no idea what my brain has been doing over the last 1.5 months, but it was pulling out crazy inverted stuff, passing & pressure, sweeps and transitions. I was kind of nice, almost like I remembered some jiu-jitsu!

We finally had to stop because I tweaked it a bit hard once when my foot forgot that we weren’t supposed to be doing annoying hooky thingies and tried to do something cute that wrenched the knee. And even though I wanted to keep going and ignore the pain, I figured it was probably smarter to have a little today and build on that rather than set myself all the way back to the beginning by being the tough chick. (Hey, I might be growing up. Maybe. Just a little.)

Home to some ice, just in case. I’ll still be out tomorrow — I have a HUGE list of chores that need to be done around the house — and I’ll be out Monday to pick my cousin up from the airport. But I’m thinking I could get back to full-time training pretty soon here…

A taste of summer

The weather decided to randomly shoot up to around 70 degrees today, which is just totally nuts for March. And the mats were packed again tonight (double-parking all over the lot), so the academy got a little toasty. At least I was smart enough to bring my ultra-light gi…

A full warmup, then on to drilling. First a review of last night, and then a continuation to a sweep to knee-on-belly. Drilled with Janet. The whole class was drilling. My wrists and elbows are now chafed from all the spider guarding.

Then in Open Mat, rolled with Janet, Dmitri, Eman (yay for controlled big guys — he totally could have spiked me on my head, but instead managed to do it slowly), and Andrew. Dmitri, a blue belt, hasn’t trained in 2.5-3 years (sometime before I got my blue belt) because of school, but has recently found time and is getting back in. He commented several times that I’ve gotten a lot better since we last rolled. (External validation! Much needed.) Andrew wanted to take my feet home, but I couldn’t seem to muster any interest in attacking his in return.

My left shoulder has been doing its aching thing again the last few days. No tingling yet, though. I’m trying to keep it iced and stretched, but so far it just seems to be getting worse. Meh. My wrist at least is mostly better; it sometimes still twinges as if it might spasm, so I’m taping it when I roll to keep it from bending too much. The spams seem to happen at the edges of its range of motion.

I have a meeting in the morning, so I can’t be shanghaied into class. (I’m still undecided about morning classes in general right now. Maybe it’s too much training…) Then tomorrow night, my friend and I are going to see John Carter (which I already know is ruined in places, but maybe they didn’t kill the whole thing), so I won’t be lifting this week. And then Saturday is my grandmother’s surprise birthday party in Richmond, so I’ll miss class then, too.

And I lost my afternoon to this site: Fashion It so, a blog that discusses not only Star Trek TNG episodes but also the fashion fails. Some language is NSFW, but holy cats, the hilarity! P.S. You’re welcome.