Mostly Harmless

Yesterday was a bit of a weird day. It started off as I was goofing off on the internet, reading Bullshido’s forums and saw an ad for Matt Hickney documentary (which kicks ass) called Walking to the Cage. Then I noticed an ad for Rupture Clothing, a company that sponsored Calvo at his pro debut… and it turns out that the ad was put together by none other than big Matt. I miss having Matt around the school, but I’m glad he’s doing well down in LA.

The voice over in that ad is none other than the craziest guy I know, Jeff B, which reminded me that it’s been months since I’ve talked to him. So, I leave work determined to get in touch with Jeff sometime this weekend to let him know that I’d like to help him with his upcoming tournament, and I get a text from him asking if I’m going to be at class. Funny how stuff like that happens. It was good to see him.

Made a deal with the kids yesterday. My son’s almost 14 and my daughter is 12 1/2. They’re fully capable of watching the baby at home for a little while and I figured I’d give them the choice of staying home or coming with me to class. I sweetened the deal by offering them $5 each if they watched Lily for me at home, where she has toys and a place to nap. They opted for the dough. I was a little nervous, but was confident that they’d take care of business. They know my number as well as their mother’s, how and why to dial 911, and to go to the neighbors if there’s an emergency that they can’t handle. So, off I went.

I started off a little distracted and feeling a little worn down. Long week at work and I was just tired, added to a little stress about the kids. Warmups consisted of about 1/2 hour of technique drills. We started off with 20 armbars from guard, then moved on to 20 triangles, 10 omoplata, 10 scissor sweep, 10 pendulum sweeps and then from there is kind of broke off. I drilled the 93 guard scissor sweep and the sweep where you kind of get your opponent on top of you and then roll him backwards. That last one is still really hard for me… clearly I’m doing something wrong.

My back feels pretty good. I’m still not generating a lot of power from my hips, which makes it hard to bridge. But the good news is that my shrimping is getting pretty damned good. When you can’t upa, all you’ve got left is turning and shrimping… so… while I wouldn’t recommend back spasms to anyone as a training tool, I’m choosing the optimistic angle.

After drills, we sparred for the rest of class. I felt good and was looking to work on half guard. I’ve been having some success with a half-butterfly sweep against other blue and white belts, but not on upper belts who are my size or larger. That is, until last week when I was working with another blue belt who pointed out that I’m not driving my hips underneath my opponent on the sweep. I wasn’t getting myself far enough under his center of gravity and as a result was forced to use my butterfly hook and arms to really muscle him over. I drilled it with Elena dozens of times on Tuesday and that detail made a huge difference.

So, yesterday at class, I tried to pull guard rolling with brown belt Todd, and he was having none of that. As I pulled guard, he stepped over and I ended up in half guard. I got his arm and belt and rolled him as came around to side control which I’m pretty sure was a bit of a surprise. In general, when I get this reversal, I try to keep the arm and turn for a kimura, but he turtled, got back to guard, swept me and ended up back in my half guard. I got my grips, got my butterfly hook in, waited until he began to knee slide over and as he raised up I slid under and fwoop. I was in his half guard. Yay me. It felt really good.

In the interest of full disclosure, though, I rolled with Todd a little later in class and he said, “You know what this means. Right? No more taking it easy on you.” He then passed my guard like butter and ended up catching me in an armbar. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the highest compliment I’ve been given in Jits to date. It’s sort of like being upgraded from “harmless” to “mostly harmless.”