Forewarned Is Forearmed

I’m not sure about the spelling there, but we had almost two hours of the most punishing wrist locks, arms bars, and shoulder twisting.  By the end of the night I was sweating from pain management rather than exercise. 

Our normal grips and movements are designed to easily lead into locks on our opponents.  So Teacher moved up our skill level by showing nerve pinches in the fingers. 

The closest we’ve ever come to this is small digit manipulation that is simply grabbing a thumb or pinky and yanking them back at uncomfortable angles.  This is an entirely different approach.  I thought the most effective being a nerve running across the top of the thumb.  The person doing the technique rolls their thumb (or anything for that matter) perpendicularly across the top.  After a bit of sensitivity builds up the nerve is easy to find and just moving it around creates the most pants wetting pain.  We moved to other digits, but the thumb won until we moved to the wrist. 

As with before this is best done with the bad guy holding something firm so you can bring weight to bear on the sensitive surface.  We were using escrima sticks from a spinning, over the elbow lock that ended up putting the stick against the left or right of the wrist.  That definitely requires a video to even understand, but the pain was well beyond pants wetting.  I was standing on the tips of my big toes with no effort; my back arched like I was get 220 applied to my sensitive bits. 

I always with this very technically complex stuff I doubt I’ll remember a lot of it, but it lays a foundation I’m really impressed by.

An Hour Late

Work is getting more stressful by the day and on top of that my social obligations seem to grow or, at least, carry more meaning. As our close friends seem to be all moving off the island we want to spend more time socializing.  So last night we promised to meet up for a meal with one of our friends (who’s moving) and I ended up having to miss the first hour of class.

When I got to class it was like old home week.  A few of the teenagers were there; one who had moved out of town and came back for a visit, Teacher Slim and others.  When Teacher Slim shows the mats always come out.  His devotion to crippling locks and painful submissions makes you want the mat.  If you’re not going to take a throw you’ll want the mat for you knees at the very least. 

In an attempt to warm up I went straight to rolls where I stand up in the end and then do it to the other side.  After five on a side I puffing and suitably ready to go, but knees are aching somewhat today.  I’m not sure why because I don’t use them too much coming up.  Assuming I’m doing it correctly, the momentum carries me up and I don’t have to use my legs much.  I’m guessing that I used them more than I thought. 

When class started up Teacher used me as the dummy for demonstrating the techniques, but when the class got started I ended up doing more instruction than anything else.  Which, I found to be quite pleasurable by the end of class.  One of our visitors from some years ago was muddling through a technique with a newer student and I was able to set up and correct very nicely within a 20 minute period. 

I ended up going home and not getting to sleep for hours and then getting up a half hour early.  No winning.

Back In The Saddle – Mildly Thrown

I’ve been out sick for the last week and half so I was a bit nervous about class, but once we got going things were pretty good. 

Teacher had told me about a drill they did while I was out, so he repeated it for me.  Four people with focus mitts surround a guy in the middle and Teacher calls out hands or feet and basically you go to town with your techniques.  I was having a grand old time with jumping high kicks when my toenail got peeled back.  Barf! 

Really it’s only a little bleeding, but there was also a split in the nail too.  Thankfully, there is the miracle of superglue to tie that back together.

Teacher somehow separated his rib from his spine during the last couple of weeks.  He’s in a lot of pain so there is lots of talking, but not much moving for him.

Poor Dave.  It sounds like his marriage is suffering.  That means that he is taking it out on the pads – boom!

Beard comes in at half time so my job has been to catch him up on what we learned and show him really quick.  He’s a black belt in Judo so I don’t have to show him much before he’s ready to go with technique, but he is great to work on with lot’s of stuff because while we mull over some esoteric point Teacher will come up and fine tune us.  I just realized last night that I’m getting super concentrated awesome lessons.  I’ve got to remember this.  Although I will admit that I feel like a dork a lot of the time, because they both do things with ease and have to talk slow for me in order to get the technique – hurr derr.