Posted 11:09 PM by spitgirl
MAT BURN

Okay, so I didn't really get mat burn. But I did see something amusing while riding transit today - I got off at my stop, keys in hand and ticket in pocket. There were these three guys ahead of me on the escalator, two of them supporting the one in the middle. I was sitting here thinking, oh dear, he must have gotten injured somewhere, they're just taking him home, that's nice... poor guy... and then I figured out about ten seconds later as they lurched as a trio out of the station that the guy in the middle was just so drunk he couldn't walk. Any sympathy I had at that point simply evaporated. Really.

This week is groundwork week, and boy oh boy am I excited! I love mat work. So, since I didn't make either Sunday or Monday night workouts, I went to both workouts today. But I was once again stumped with the problem - go to both workouts in the afternoon and run stairs in the middle, or what? So I ended up running a set of stairs before the 4pm workout in order to get that out of the way so I wouldn't have to do it later. I asked Dr. Ur if he'd like me to run warm-up again... and he said yes... so I went ahead with evil workout #2, which Lucille agreed to last night. (It involves a lot of gymnastics style tumbling.) I hit everything I wanted to except for the bouncing, which I thought would really kill them. But after the warm-up, I got a couple of people thanking me for such a great warm-up. Woohoo! I guess one thing I can really do is get people all warmed up. I'm not that great on technique yet, so I guess I'm good for something...

Dr. Ur then ran us through a bunch of blocks and finally got to the groundwork portion of things. We worked escapes from scarf hold - the first of which I'd seen and the following two that I hadn't seen before. The first one was simply to reach around and wrap your leg around the other person's leg and then roll them over. The second one was to twist back and forth and then push an arm off of your neck into a chicken wing position. The third one was if the person had overcommitted behind them - simply to sit up and then use their weight against them. Very interesting techniques, and they helped out the next workout.

I forgot to mention that Dr. Ur was using me as a test dummy for most of his workout. Normally he picks on someone, and that someone was me that particular day. Wonderful. The last thing you really want as a brown belt is a 230-lb tank of a hankido master drilling all his weight into you while in a scarf hold. He managed to crack my back pretty nicely, though, while demonstrating a technique.

So, Dr. Link announced that upper ranks were saved from running stairs, since we were doing matwork. Urk. There went my hard work at the beginning! Oh well, it really didn't hurt me any and I did get a good warmup from it. We started out with a little bit of yoga to warm us up and then went into boiling. We eventually split up into three large groups and had three rotating lecturers - an arm bar lecturer, a weight dispersion lecturer, and a chokes lecturer. Arm bars we worked basic figure 4s. Of course as a partner for the second round, I get James Gill, Mr. I Have Rubber Joints. (As my partner for the first round I got Gene, who also has weird shoulders.)

Second round was chokes, and Steve described a couple of basic chokes, starting with the most deadly and the one that you would want to do in a self-defense situation (reach up, grab for trachea, and pinch in on both sides. Immediate KO). He then described some techniques that were illegal in judo, including a thumb choke (think knife hand with the tip of the thumb just slightly out). The two chokes that we worked... one was simply to cross your arms and grab for the back of the collar of the dobok and then lean forward until your forehead touches the ground. Good choke. The second one was if the person was in a turtle position - using the blade edge of the hand, fold the ear in half (not quite as painful as it sounds) and wind along the jawline until you get your hand in there, then curve the fingers up into a half-fist and get the carotid that way.

Third round was weight and pins, and Dr. Link was talking about not doing the lawnmower technique, but instead working with your arm as a fulcrum by grabbing onto something and then leveraging on something else. For example, across the back of the neck or across a leg. Very interesting stuff, and we got to play around with that a bit.

Finally, we got a round of matwork in, and I got paired with a white belt named Tiffany. The girl has good instincts and got me into a scarf hold that I had to just sit through until she overbalanced and I could simply sit up and pin her. (Thank Dr. Ur for that.) I'll have to keep an eye on her - she'll probably do fairly well in the club with some attention. Kent also made some notes for me for the classes I missed over the weekend. Thank you, Kent! You rock. I'll have to go through the stuff with him sometime when we have time.

Had a good discussion with George today about philosophy, and was able to turn that into life philosophy. Sometimes I have to remind myself that this is not my life, that there is something greater than martial arts training. Martial arts is not my god. I have one, and He's good. He puts everything in perspective, including all of this craziness that is martial arts and all of the politics that go through the club. This is just an activity, and what really matters is the people.