Sweep the leg!!

Martial arts was quite informative this week. I got to learn a basic bo kata, which Mr. B. says looks pretty good already. I still haven’t gotten used to the rear hand’s position they use for the staff on strikes, where the bo smacks me on the outside of the upper arm every time I strike. Granted, it’s much less painful than the way I learned bo at my old school, where the bo was supposed to tuck under my arm (every time I struck with the far end of the bo, I hit myself in the ribs with the near end). But the new hand position just feels awkward to me. I guess I’ll get used to it with practice.

On the jujitsu side of things, I’ve learned all my defending the mount techniques. (The mount position in grappling is where you sit on top of your opponent’s torso, usually at the ribs/hips area). Probably the toughest one for me right now is a single-lapel choke. As uke (the partner who receives the technique) tries to choke me, I grasp one of the lapels by the side of uke’s neck, jerk their head up and, still holding onto the lapel, get my outside arm over and around their neck into a cross-choke. Except my uke had prior grappling experience —in Mizu Ryu Jujitsu, right, Gumby?—and she could set the choke on me before I had even buried my hands in her lapel. So there I am yanking at her gi’s collar and accidentally elbowing her in the jaw, trying to get my own choke on her while I can’t even breathe. It was tons of fun.

And then Gumby, who was rubbing at the rapidly-forming bruise on her jaw, looked down at her gi and said, “Are you bleeding?!”

Turns out I had somehow managed to cut myself during kata. Got it on my gi and hers. The Clumsy Ninja strikes [herself] again! So I hustled over to the first-aid kit before I got any on the floor.

Can’t wait for class on Tuesday! I’m not super confident in all the techniques yet, but maybe I’ll roll (free grappling) after class.