Choose Strong
For Tim.
Toward the middle of the month, news broke that Ms. Ivanka Trump's family had
been on the jiu-jitsu journey. In an NDTV podcast she told what was well-known
in the tribe:
``It's almost like a moving meditation because the movements are so micro,''
the blue belt said. ``It's like three-dimensional chess.''
``It's fun,'' she continued, adding that the practice ``combines physical
movements and philosophy in an amazing way.''
Jan 3, John spotted me and pointed out that I was often too conservative yet at
times hurried: ``When you are fast, you lose some control,'' and ``You were fast
where you should slow down and slow where you should speed up.'' On the same
day, Ebol showed me how easy it was to sweep from butterfly after controlling an
arm with a two-on-one grip.
Jan 6, Kevin from Samrai BJJ in Campbell taught the noon fundamental class. He
showed lots of details starting from the arm-drag in guard. There was the
traidtional armbar which, if failed, could lead to the pendulum sweep or
backtake. Rolling with him, I learned a detail (shelf his knee) to get under the
figure-four bodylock from the back.
Jan 10, learned from Machine the belly-down armbar from guard after trapping an
arm. It works gi and no-gi. It was a fast and nasty one:
- Trap the (say right) arm and break his posture.
- Right foot goes to this hip and push to move my torso to his right side.
- Tuck my right arm to unblock myself and climb over his shoulder with the other
leg.
Jan 13, Leon, the 71-year-old, 5'4", 135lbs judo blackbelt, took me aside at the
end of noon class and tried a lapel choke on me. It was called the Canto choke,
he said. It had a few entries but the one we practiced was from cross-side top,
my favorite attacking position (assuming I'm on my partner's right side):
- Grab his near-side lapel with my left hand, thumb up. [No need to go too deep.
But I can try.]
- Release some pressure to allow him to turn into me. [Far side underhook helps,
but it shouldn't matter. I need to experiment.]
- Once he's on his right side, step my left leg over his head and push the foot
down under to catch his neck.
- Windshield-wipe my right leg toward his head to catch his right arm.
- Close the legs like a triangle and pinch.
- Pull the lapel.
We did about a dozen reps on each other and I was very happy to learn this.
Jan 14, we trilled x-guard moves, top and bottom. I rolled with Richard and got
my back taken twice. I realized he was using the exact move against my
trap-and-roll from turtle. In addition, I forgot the knee-on-the-belly defense
and sucked at escaping the seat-belt grip. That night, I turned to Henry's
videos and re-studied the open-guard.
The next morning, I returned to Henry's Attack of the Turtles series and watched
again how to get to my knees without gettting my back taken when my opponent has
a kimura or a seatbelt grip on me. One key, as I see it now, is that I should
tuck my bottom arm/shoulder before getting back to my knees to face him.
Jan 21/22, Leon was a Ruskie born in St. Petersburg the same year with Putin. We
often drilled takedown together. He showed me how to break his strong lapel grip
(which I first learned from Gene but never practiced afterward). While he could
do a perfect Asian squat, his knees were not flexible and were injured. He
hesitated when pressing into my lower leg to pass my guard and I told him no
problem and later showed him my lotus sit. We then switched I could feel his hip
and knee flexibility was poor. He talked about his routines after class and
stressed the importance of neck strength. We saw his warm-up drills where he
flexed his cervix on his feet and forehead on the mat. I realized that my good
flexibility was from lotus sitting reading the dictionary for the past five
years. I decided to pick up his neck drill.
Both my wife and kid fell sick in the recent weeks and even I sneezed from time
to time. The third week of the month, energy rushed back and I grappled five
days, starting from the open mat on Sun Jan 12. By Wedsday, I felt slight muscle
sore all over the body. I didn't have to but took Thursday off and did squats
instead.
My health surprised me (before I was struck down the last week of Jan) and made
me feel invincible. If I can keep it by rolling on the mat and eating well, I
needed very little else to be happy in the second half of my life.
