Busy busy… but still time to think about BJJ

New posts and responses to questions will come soon.

Too much stuff going on at the moment to be able to focus on it just yet, so keep tight.

In the meantime, some random martial farts:

BJJ
note – I had to edit this because I basically said basically about 50 million times. lol.
I’m working on my hook guard… basically butterfly guard but the other person is either standing or kneeling or giving me some room to move. I grip their gi pants leg, around the shin area. Currently experimenting playing with balance. Pushing one way, waiting for the resistance, then switching and going for the sweep. Difficulties are letting go of the grip in order to clear their arm (thus giving them a chance to recover balance with their leg) and also what the hell to do when I get to X-guard. Must ask my sensei about that.

I’m also trying to literally use my head more… for guard passing, I try to use my head to control their body. I might be making a mistake there, but it seems to be working so far. Control the legs, apply pressure with my head and shoulders while I free my legs and walk them around for the pass.

Oh, and I got choked out for the first time. Hardcore.

I was rolling with Big Judo Guy®. Last time we rolled, he basically rubbed his chest into my ear for five minutes as I lay on my back completely unable to do anything about it (or breathe.) I didn’t want that to happen again this time.

This time, he squashed me for three and a half minutes, then started choking me out pretty good. I felt myself feeling a bit strange, but stupidly decided to struggle and writhe around in an attempt to escape. Next thing I know, there’s a strange feeling of release. I didn’t crap my pants or anything, but the next thing I remember I’m sitting up and there’s stars in my vision. He said to me “Shimekata.” Completeley without expression. (“Choked.”) I nodded, yes, then we shook hands and rolled again. Because that’s the way I ROLL. YEAH.

Wing Chun
My interest in dogma-fighting has been rekindled. Somebody whom I (with good reason and intentions!) focused on from my previous wing chun school, and basically bullied him into facing the truth about the wing chun he was training, has recently taken his first BJJ class, and is loving the release, the freedom, the satisfaction, the liberation – freeing his mind and body from the shackles of such a dogmatic and convoluted strain of an already difficult style.

I remember well my first week of BJJ. I was literally grinning like a maniac. It was so satisfying not to have any limits on the way to move my body. I could move it in the most natural and energy-filled way, and be told “good! good!” rather than “oh dear. You need to relax more. You suck very, very bad right now. It will take approximately 20 years before you are even close to being able to move your arm in a straight line correctly. Yeah, sorry about that. But this is the best style in the world, so, you know. It’s worth it.”

And how the instructor would demonstrate a movement that looked so difficult at first, like the triangle, or armbar from guard. And my mind was so indoctrinated with the wing chun training process, I thought it would take me literally years to be able to pull this kind of thing off correctly. But I remember my great surprise and joy when within weeks, I could begin to actually do them, and in just a few months, start tapping people out with them.

And this, my ultimate martial fart for the week.

“On the streets, there are no RULEZ! Not like in the ring, a sport, where there are RULEZ! OK! MAn I HATE THE RULZ SO MUCh they limit my wing chun quite a lot for reals.”
– Reason number 4,567 why wing chun is better than anything else in the world ever.

I was thinking about this the other day. And you know, it hit me. On the street there are no rules.

Really? What about the law? Where in the law does it say it’s okay to gouge somebody’s eye out if they threaten to duff you up? Where in the law does it say kneeing somebody in the groin, or tearing their balls of with a twist of the wrist (the movement is in the first form… if you didn’t know that, you don’t have teh real wing chun) is acceptable behaviour?

News flash! It doesn’t! Those things are illegal!

Now where can you repeatedly punch someone in the face, elbow them in the nose, or knee them in the ribs? Where in the world is it legal to pound the everloving shit out of someone for fifteen minutes? Where in the world can you take a huge dump on someone’s face and not get in trouble for it?

Everything except that last one, you can do “in the ring.”

So there! MYTH BUSTED! On the street, there are rules.