Geezer's Long March Toward the Elite Sneaking Up On the Finish Line

[ZKP]

I follow ya....Mark. To hell with thumbs in the eyes....

[Mark E. Hurling]

Weight: 246.5

Into the gym for a GXP just to keep the blood flowing and uncongealed. Finished off with a much needed session of foam roller and associated stretching to get some lower back and hamstring kinks I had accumulated from a lot of standing around checking things off lists this week. A lot of people are staying home today, the roads were like the old movie On the Beach and you could hear crickets and see tumbleweeds blowing down the corridors at work. All can hear in my subconscious is Dust in the Wind.

[Jonathon Sullivan]

Weight: 246.5

Into the gym for a GXP just to keep the blood flowing and uncongealed. Finished off with a much needed session of foam roller and associated stretching to get some lower back and hamstring kinks I had accumulated from a lot of standing around checking things off lists this week. A lot of people are staying home today, the roads were like the old movie On the Beach and you could hear crickets and see tumbleweeds blowing down the corridors at work. All can hear in my subconscious is Dust in the Wind.

Heh. Thanks for the classical references. Just watched OTB again a month ago. Gregory Peck was the George Clooney of his time. Only better.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Heh. Thanks for the classical references. Just watched OTB again a month ago. Gregory Peck was the George Clooney of his time. Only better.

Yes he was. Infinitely classier.

Weight: 247.5

Jujitsu this morning was another really great session. One blue belt showed up and he was a little bigger than me so I had a partner to work with that could give me a sense of reality. I was the only brown belt, and all the rest were black belts. So Master Bellman opened the gates to some things that the blue belt in particular was fortunate to be around for. Me too for that matter. We started off with a series of defenses and escapes from a double lapel grab. They were variants of collapsing the attacker's elbows, or stepping back to draw the attacker forward and off balance to the front, or low hook punches to the floating ribs. Some of the half dozen or so were combinations of all of them.

We then moved on to some ground techniques that were about keeping someone from getting up until you could get a control hold you were satisfied with to get them up under your terms. One starts out on the ground proned out. As they start to draw up a leg you put a knee into the outside of their quad. Either on the side closest to you or you reach across to the opposite quad and nail it with your elbow. Right on the illiotibial band. Goddam does that hurt. I made the mistake of asking Victor, the biggest (300+ lbs.) what the strikes felt like. I was trying to spare him getting hit again. He said, "Get your ass down here and let Master Bellman do it to you!" Oh baby. Your leg spasms and you can't control the autonomic straightening out of it. You can't get up unless you have one or both knees drawn up.

This gave me an idea. Master Bellman asked s if we had any questions about techniques in general. Since John, the 8th degree black belt in our art and a retired veteran of LAPD was there, I asked about the right way to de-link demonstrators and remove them without pepper spray. This elicited a lot of laughs. John said, "Get a riot baton and I'll separate those guys in short order." That amused me because that was my first thought when I saw the UC Davis pepper spray video. Lever them apart the old school way. But Master Bellman said "OK Mark, sit down. Victor, Dave, you sit down next to him and link arms." Victor, as I mentioned earlier is 300+ and Dave, the blue belt is probably 260, and I'm 247. So collectively, we weigh 847 lbs. This is the load some poor schnook of a cop might have to lift to pick just one of us up. We linked arms and Master Bellman (all 5'6" and 160 lbs. of him) told us to get strong. First he stepped between Victor and I and then stuck his elbow and forearm against Victor's neck and stepped sideways. Victor peeled away in seconds. Then it was my turn. I can say with complete frankness and certainty that when your head and neck are displaced, you can't maintain a link of arms with the person next to you. It looks pretty innocuous too. Is it painful? Kind of, but not so much that my eyes felt like they were about to fall out. What really takes place is that you lose strength as your neck bends over. No doubt the sensitive feelings of the poor demonstrators would be hurt and they would complain of brutality. But the discomfort subsides immediately once the elbow is withdrawn, and it doesn't leave a painful residue behind. Even easier than what I came up with. Then you stand them up with a right angle hold or goose neck compression on the wrist. A piece of cake, that gets even easier when you speak softly and politely in the ear of the person you are standing up prompting them how to get their feet and legs underneath them as you remove them.

We finished off with a defense against being pushed up against a wall. Something suggested by Victor. The attacker pushes you against a wall from behind. The key in this is to get one shoulder forward and the opposite leg back. Then you push back in a kind of hip check and leading with the elbow. First the hip bangs in to the attacker in the lower body, and as the attacker gets knocked back, it allows you to bring the elbow back and into their face, head, chest, or neck.

[tertius]

Sounds like a good class. That demonstration of the body following the head is pretty damn fascinating.

[Mark E. Hurling]

The last few classes have been exceptional. It might be the subject matter, or it might be I've been exposed to some of these techniques before but didn't know enough for them to really make an impression or truly understand what I was seeing. About two years ago the wax on wax off suddenly fell away for me as a green belt and I began to see the underlying patterns and more of the subtleties in the art. It doesn't happen every time I step on the mat, but when it does, it's like getting the magic trick.

As for the head and body thing, I've heard it since I was 18 in Judo 101, the first PE class I took in college. "Where the head goes, the body follows" from the instructor a huge Buddha bellied Cecil Franklin. But like a lot of "big technique" it has way more aspects than I know even Franklin understood, let alone a teenager. One thing I failed to mention was a standing them up technique from yesterday where once de-linked, you place the top edge of the index finger under the nose (the philtrum) with one hand, and insert the index knuckle of the other hand under the mastoid. Then you pull up and slightly to the rear slowly and gently. You just want to stand up to relieve the owwies, and like with the elbow to the neck it stops the instant the pressure is let off. Of course gloves might be a good idea if the demonstrator has a runny nose.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Weight: 245.5

As part of the recovery I decided not to neglect the cardio. A quick GXP followed by some of the usual foam rolling and stretching.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Weight: 246

Jujitsu last night had Master Bellman experimenting with a different class structure and teaching model with the kids. The blue belts were delivering the instruction with me overseeing the process and talking quietly to them to make sure they got the instruction right. Impressive couple of blue belts, including one boy who (finally) seems to have gotten serious about jujitsu and did a good job of teaching last night. Maybe because none of his goof-around buddies were there.

I taught a new white belt in the adult class. The guy moves well and has most of the the basic techniques down well. A little correction was called for because like a lot people new to this art, he has a tendency to lean forward or to the side rear at the waist. Not good because the head off a center plane tends to put you off balance making you vulnerable to a takedown and harder to move quickly until you get everything lined up on center again. I always tell them to keep the head, shoulders, hips, and knees more or less lined up over each other even with the knees bent. I helped him polish up his blocking technique. His kicks were a little too much football drop kick and not enough draw up the knee, extend the lower leg, impact below the waist with the ball of the foot, and retract the lower leg. He improved his kicks a good deal from the start to the finish of the 90 minute session.

[Jonathon Sullivan]

His kicks were a little too much football drop kick and not enough draw up the knee, extend the lower leg, impact below the waist with the ball of the foot, and retract the lower leg. He improved his kicks a good deal from the start to the finish of the 90 minute session.

"Pick it up, stick it out, pull it back, put it down."

God knows how many times I've uttered that, teaching people how to kick.

Then I started Krav, with their groin kick, which is a lot like a football kick, and is their most important kick. Krav has been a real exercise in Emptying the Cup.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Weight: 246

I did a GXP this morning and worked out the kinks with foam rolling and a good stretch. I also finally committed and signed up for the Costa Mesa Seminar in March. Of course since I was not paying attention and got interrupted at work I managed to order two of the seminars but that'll get fixed without doubt. I also ordered Starting Strength:3.

I've always had mixed thoughts about chambering kicks. I came to the conclusion some years ago it was a bad idea for high kicks because of the time and telegraphing effect. We don't kick above the waist in mushin ryu, so the drawbacks are pretty minimal. One thing with an American football kick that was drawing this guy off a little was his tendency to lean way back as his foot came up. That can result in a different kind of problem.