Hypoxia

Translation from the medicalese:

"Hypo"- under, or insufficient
"ox"- oxygen
"ia"- condition of

Or:
The state of a BJJ student after spending an entire open mat having Brian run a choke/neck crank clinic on her.

Next time I come out of class with this rotten-melon, four-sizes-too-big head sensation, I’m going to just chill out in my car for twenty or thirty minutes with a magazine and a water bottle before I try to drive. It affected my LOC (That would be "level of consciousness") more that I thought it would.

The school was packed to the gills today- I think a lot of people had the day off work. I too had the day off work!!! Har har.

Today we spent forty minutes listening to Rodrigo talk about a lot of changes that will be happening. All the GB schools in the area will be on the same rotating curriculum. We are going to have attendance cards to be marked off so that the instructors can keep better track of how often you’re showing up. A few formality changes- we are going to line up and bow/shake hands with each and every person as class ends instead of just bowing to the teacher en masse, no more coming in with pants that aren’t the same color as your jacket (damn- I’ve been wearing the blue GB A2 pants with one of my white gi jackets… now I have to get that blue GB jacket hemmed if I want to use those pants any more), we have to Sharpie our names onto the lapels of our jackets (I kind of like that one; I’m so bad about remembering people’s names… although it will scuttle my plan of having JB and JM eventually inherit a couple of my gi’s). It also looks like once you get to blue belt, you won’t advance in rank any more unless you are consistantly getting to the ADVANCED classes- not just doing basic classes. That would be something of a PITA if I cared about advancing in rank, but since I don’t, it doesn’t bother me.

Takedown drills. Then Scissor sweeps. I was happy about the scissor sweeps, because this is one technique I never actually got the official 101 instruction on- so it it something that I have wanted to clean up and make sure I had all the nuances correct on.

Short "specific training" matches. Start in guard and try to reverse. I was working with Brian, and because he gives me no slack, I was very pleased when he had to actually struggle a bit to reverse me. I kept a good base, hunkered low, snugged myself right up to his butt, and controlled his hips. Every time he tried to get ahold of a leg, I thrust it straight out of his reach, and then yanked it back in before he could take advantage of my compromised base. I didn’t do quite so well trying to reverse HIM. Brian is not a table. He is a solid block of granite sitting directly on the ground.

Then the Let’s-See-If-We-Can-Pop-Kitsune’s-Head-Right-Off Clinic. He was doing his "Did that feel like a choke or a crank?" routine. He wasn’t doing very well in that regard- he kept getting cranks. I was trying to hold out as long as I could before tapping (Thanks, Pat), and sometimes even when he had a good choke, he let go too soon. He also once yanked me into his guard by reeling me in by the trailing edge of my belt, the smartass!

Renzo Gracie is coming to give a seminar in May. Think I’m going to miss the signup, though, as I can’t commit to any extraneous expenses until I am re-employed.

Later…………….

Evening BJJ! Again the gym was packed- and with a half dozen new people, including a Kitsune-sized woman! Two of the other fresh fish had gi’s that not only said "Shao-lin" on the backs, they had the (correct) Chinese characters for such. I didn’t get a chance to question them tonight, but I mean to!

I had dithered a bit about going in for a second helping tonight, as my head was still feeling a bit overripe from the morning choke-fest… and when I saw that Enrique was drilling an escape from the rear naked, I groaned inwardly. Oh well.

After a round of gillotine escapes, The Great Panda came and took away my newbie female student for shrimping lessons, and paired me up with an only-slightly-less-new large, muscular fellow. He was very polite, but also a bit spazzy and anxious to prove that he had previous MA experience. I had to tell him to go lighter and slower on me, which he was polite enough to respect.

After drilling the escape from rear naked chokes, we did relay sparring- first starting in back mount, then starting in closed guard. The only thing I seemed to be doing well in those situations was locking on a half-guard and sticking like a leech. It was obviously frustrating a few people, who had to work hard to get out. A few times, I was able to replace full guard or sneak under for that deep half guard (my new favorite game).

The open mat afterward was blue-belt and up only. I didn’t hang around, because all the colored belts who were there tonight are either so much larger or so much better than me- or both- that there really wasn’t anyone appropriate for me to play with.

We did the bow-and-shake-with-everyone again. I’m not sure how I feel about this. It’s a nice concept, but it takes a long time when there are a lot of students. Also, if I’m going to bow and shake, I want to look someone in the eye while I do it and not have it be a perfunctory rush-on-through thing where you barely look at each other. If you’re not going to do it right, what’s the point? Enrique also had us bow to the pic of Carlos Sr.