Chokarama!

Clutched tightly between the thighs of large man, with my own shoulder compressing the veins in my throat, I struggled to understand why I was so jealous of Bob and his judo class.  But that was a very small thought as my desire to breath overruled pretty much everything else.  

Bob has recently started Judo class.  I am jealous of Bob.  The mechanics of Judo make it necessary to practice with other people.  The mechanics require the practitioner to engage physically with another person. My current art is very traditional.  We do not engage physically very often.  I am on my 26th class and we have done groundwork about 3 three times.  I am not complaining, but I miss the chess like struggle of using the body in 3 dimensions and letting kinesiology take over when other senses are not centrally engaged.  

So while we prep for Celebration next month I assumed that we would be working on kata and exercises ad nauseam.   During a self directed warm up Sensei pulled out mats and and prepped an area, which meant ground work!

We were introduced to "shrimping" (forcing your hips to the side and down to create space) in order to learn to put people into a triangle choke with our legs.  

We then learned how to escape by putting the soon to be locked arm into a bent position with the hand up by the face.  This takes the lock out of contention. We were supposed to get the second hand up in between the legs, but it didn't go that way very well for me.  

I got picked as the Uke for Sensei quite a few times and he is a strong man. Even when we was not doing an arm bar I was quickly tapping when he squeezed his thighs.  Three seconds to midnight.  

Mark and I ended up choking and being choked the rest of the hour.  Really fascinating stuff and physically grueling.  I was a bit concerned about my back, but this morning everything was in the right place and I didn't experience contraction.