	Tracing my own path through my worldsheet

my livejournal, embedded in my website for your viewing pleasure.

page last updated: 13 Feb 2008

[2008/06/03 4:42 pm]

Highlight reel, beginning of May

Getting my blue belt

[2008/05/12 12:41 am]
I got my blue belt.

From Felicia Oh.

I cried. A lot.

We've had a great weekend. The women's seminar today was pretty special. At the end Elliott thanked everybody for coming, and announced that Felicia would be back much more often, and that there would be a new relationship between Felicia and the kimonogirls. Then he said, "I think that Felicia has something to say." Felicia started talking about how she wouldn't be here in Toronto without me, and said that she had been very happy to meet and train with me. She talked about how she hadn't had the opportunity to get to know any of the other kimonogirls, but that she knew me and my jiu-jitsu, and that she had discussed it with Elliott and...

Then she pulled a blue belt out of her bag. I put my hands to my face and started crying. I think I fell down, too. I never expected it to happen, but there is absolutely nobody I would rather have gotten my belt from than Felicia, and nowhere I would rather have gotten it than right there with the kimonogirls. The next ten minutes are a complete blur, with people hugging me and kissing me and congratulating me, and I just sat there bawling like a little kid.

I am Felicia's third blue belt and the kimonogirls' first. There are other people who deserve it more than I do, but I am still honoured and grateful.

[2008/04/06 10:09 am]
I am a NAGA grappling world champion.

[2008/03/10 6:47 pm]
The buttloads of snow
Make me miss California
I mean, what the fuck?

[2008/03/01 8:17 pm]
I won gold in no-gi and silver in gi. Won all matches by submission in about a minute except for the gi finals, which I lost by triangle choke to a woman who was about 200 times better than any white belt I've ever rolled with. :)

[2007/12/17 11:21 pm]
Awesome weekend. And we did the 10th Planet half guard stuff tonight, too, so I got to do more Electric Chairs! w00t!

I don't even know where to start telling you about it. I got very very little sleep and lots of what the kids today are calling "fuckin' sick pothead jiu-jitsu, yo". I knew most of the stuff he taught (it was super basic half guard (lockdown, whip up, old school, electric chair, some stoner control stuff) and rubber guard (the mission control to omoplata or Twister Side sequence) but I got lots of tune-up details. Including how to apply better Electric Chairs. Muahaha.

I got to roll with some of it tonight and my rubber guard was tighter than it's ever been. I couldn't do anything besides using retard and crackhead to try to tap him with a Bayev Bite or collarbone submission, though, because the guy I was training with outweighed me by 70 lbs and I couldn't get my legs around his shoulders. Hehe.

[2007/12/07 3:29 am]
Man, this is some funky shit. Break it down for me, fellas:

What: Party with special guest Eddie Bravo!
When: 16 December 2007, 8pm-1am.
Why: To celebrate Toronto jiu-jitsu
Where: Diesel Playhouse, 56 Blue Jays Way, Toronto
Who: YOU!

Hi Friends,
OpenMat BJJ & MMA is VERY happy to announce that in addition to our highly anticipated no gi seminar with BJJ superstar and masterming Eddie "The Twister" Bravo, we are going to be hosting a free party open to all members of the Canadian BJJ community!

It's so easy for us to get lost in the "my team, your team" mentality, but what we ALL have in common is that our lives have been transformed for the better by this beautiful art we love. Come celebrate this magic called Jiu-Jitsu with your fellow BJJers, and a man who has given his life to BJJ and shown us that if we believe in ourselves, we can achieve anything!

There will be food and drinks, music, fight videos, a book signing(!) and door prizes courtesy of our generous sponsors FightPlanet, Pound4Pound, CrossFit Toronto and Diesel Playouse!

The party will be held at Diesel Playhouse (a great spot to check out the UFC!) – 56 Blue Jays Way, a few blocks South-East of King and Spadina.

Anyone interested in sponsoring the event, contact Elliott at OpenMat – classes@openmat.ca.

More info and announcements coming soon. See you off the mat!

Elliott

OpenMat BJJ & MMA

[2007/11/02 1:56 pm]
I'm happy to be coming home to my gang but I'm sad to be leaving. :(

I was talking to Felicia earlier and she said that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to train together on Friday morning if I had to catch a flight at LAX in the afternoon, so we moved our private session to Thursday morning. If you want to read about that session then you can check http://tapgrrl.livejournal.com for all of the latest Alaina BJJ news. We hung around for an hour or so afterwards, rolling and chatting, and then Felicia went off to train with her high school wrestling team. I grabbed some food and sat in a Starbucks writing down my notes.

I got back to BJMUTA around 4pm and did my own Crossfit workout (knocked 2:35 off of my previous time!), then watched an adorable kid's wrestling class. One girl there was smoking the boys with takedown after takedown. It was awesome.

I watched a couple of UFCs (including the fight where Nate Quarry knocked Shonie Carter senseless) with two members of the BJMUTA fight team and Big John McCarthy himself. Didn't talk to him or anything, but he hung out by the counter at the front.

Felicia showed up at 6 and we chatted for an hour or so, then she asked if i wanted to meet John.

I said, "hey, sure."

So she took me back to his office and introduced me as the girl from Toronto who was training for a week. We sat around and talked about MMA in Ontario, athletic commissions, and staph infections. (He had a chunk taken out of his own hip because of staph, and we looked at the pictures of Kevin Randleman's narsty spots.) He also introduced me to Monte Cox, "the CEO of M-1, where Fedor just signed."

"And Randy, too!" I said.

Monte laughed, and John said, "yeah, but we don't talk to him about that."

It was a surreal experience.

Anyway, Felicia and I rolled for about ten minutes and she tapped me about twenty times, with both of us laughing like idiots the whole time. Then we took the attached picture, had a big hug, and I cried as I left to go back to Hollywood.

I met Yani at Legends just before Eddie's class, where we drilled what we'd been drilling earlier in the week, plus learned a twister setup from the turtle. We rolled HARD for about 40 minutes at the end of class, and several of the more advanced people took time to show me a few techniques and give me pointers. The best match of the night, in my opinion, was Yani versus the last guy he rolled with - it was highly technical and back and forth the whole time. I wish I'd gotten it on video.

After class Eddie gave me a big hug, told me he was happy I came, and said I moved like I had been training for a couple of years, which as you can imagine made me giddy like a little girl.

More details later. Have to catch my flight. Miss you all! Can't wait to see you tomorrow!

- A

[2007/10/31 1:54 pm]
So! Didn't update yesterday. You get two days for the price of one in this update. (Part of this I'm copying and pasting from my LiveJournal.)

I did the noon class at 10th Planet yesterday. Eddie's a cool guy and a great teacher, and everybody in class was really nice. We worked half guard sweeps, a kimura from side control, and a couple of moves from the Dogfight, including my favourite flashy submission, the Powder Keg. During class we took a break to stand around the computer at the front of Legends and watch this video. Eddie was stoned, of course, so he felt he had to explain to us what was happening in the video. Because the plot was so complicated, you see. And he walked around for the rest of the class, saying, "smokin' weed all DAY. Weed."

But first! I had a private lesson with Scott Epstein. We reviewed rubber guard transitions and some submissions. He complimented my "crazy flexibility", but only after I broke his posture (on his instruction) and he announced to the camera crew, "uh, there's a tit in my face." It should offend me but just thinking about it cracks me up.

So, yeah, the whole session with Scott was filmed by a crew of people, eight strong (including two sound guys, two cameramen, one director, and three random assistants talking into cell phones), because Scott is going to be featured on the show TapouT. After we were done, one of the assistants made me sign a release and took my picture with a Polaroid instant camera. "Did that fall out of the '80s?" I asked the guy.

One approach I thought was really useful was drilling starting from a very bad position; in yesterday's case it was from somebody sitting on your head with a full kimura grip on your arm. The top person tries to tap the bottom person, and the bottom person tries to escape, reguard or tap the top person. I don't think I ever tapped anybody, but I did manage to re-guard a couple of guys and sweep somebody into Spider Web and fight to break his defense. I also got the opportunity to crawl all over people to try to get kimuras and armbars when they wouldn't give them to me. The guys were usually much, much stronger than me, so they would buck me off and I repeatedly got into a crazy position, face down on top of somebody, still holding with a kimura grip, and using my forehead on the mat to try to give myself the leverage to shove my other foot into their abdomen to get an armbar. I imagined it must be something like how Elliott looked last Thursday night when he was on my back, going all Chewbacca on me. It made me laugh myself silly. In fact, the mental image is still making me laugh. We rolled for a few minutes at the end, too. Everybody warned me, but the guys (and they are all guys) at 10th Planet are really intense, even when they're being nice. I eventually called it a day after a black belt had me in north-south and I almost neck cranked myself trying to escape like I tried on Brett last week.

Yani slept through the lunchtime class yesterday, so after it was done I called him and we went for food. We had a great chat - he is SUCH a nice guy. He went off to go surfing, and I came back to take a nap, and then woke up to do laundry. Even with lots of jiu-jitsu clothes, a week's worth of twice-a-day training means you have to do laundry every couple of days. We met up again for the evening class at 10th Planet. It was Yani's first day back after his three week concussion-imposed layoff, so he rolled lightly with a chiropractor and I didn't roll at all.

This morning I had another private with Felicia, which I've written up at http://tapgrrl.livejournal.com. I'm finding my training with her way more useful than 10th Planet (though 10th Planet is hella fun, and the rolling is great experience, so I've decided to spend tomorrow training with her, too. Just waiting for her to call me to let me know what time works for her - morning or afternoon. If it's afternoon, I'll do the morning class at 10th Planet and spend the afternoon and evening in Valencia. If it's morning, I have a tough call to make - do I bother coming back for the 10th Planet class, or do I do Felicia's evening no gi class and try to make it back for the second half of Eddie's?

Tonight Yani and I were going to watch Conor Hune's MMA fight in Irvine, but Google Maps tells us that it's "up to 2 hours and 40 minutes" in traffic, so we've decided against it. I think I might walk around Hollywood instead. It's Halloween, which is apparently a huge holiday here. I've already seen one guy in a Beavis mask, ordering coffee at a Starbucks in a Beavis voice.

- A

[2007/10/30 1:51 pm]
I met Felicia at the gym in Valencia at 10:30. We rolled for about 15 minutes ("rolled" meant she pretty much held still to see what I would do) and after we were done she said, "Well? What did you think?"

I paused, thought about it, and in my most excited "the New Kids on the Block are coming to my town!" voice I said, "OH MY GOD I GOT TO ROLL WITH FELICIA OH!!!" And then I said, "I'm sorry, I'll bet that was a little embarrassing." She agreed, but I said, "you tapped Megumi Fuji. You can deal with a little effusive praise." I asked her if we could to it again, but next time if she could try to tap me so I could see what she was doing. I didn't know what I was asking for. Heh.

The rest of the private lesson wasn't about techniques, but rather, she took apart my rolling and gave me little things to do and pay attention to in my transitions and positioning. It was more about what you can do when the setup for something doesn't quite work: what the bare essentials of some movements are, and what you have to do to make those bare essentials into something useful.

After we were done, Felicia had to leave to train with a high school wrestling team (!), so I came back to Hollywood, grabbed my stuff, had lunch at a Whole Foods while watching the largest parade of fake breasts since Pride, and drove back to Valencia where I spent my afternoon in a Starbucks. I got a call from Scott Epstein, one of Eddie Bravo's brown belts who I'm doing a private with, and he asked me if it was okay if we were to be filmed for a television show. ?? I also heard from Yani - I'm meeting him at the 10th Planet morning class and then we're going to go for lunch.

Anyhoo, at 5pm I did a boxing class, and at 6pm Felicia and another woman showed up and we chatted for an hour and a half while we counted the Crossfit workout for BJMUTA's competition team.

Then it was time for the women's gi class. There were a half dozen women there, and we worked armbars, chokes and transitions to butterfly sweeps from guard. At the end we did some rolling - they go pretty intensely, so I really had to focus. The last ten minutes of the class I rolled with Felicia, who managed to armbar me and choke me in about a zillion different ways, including the last gi choke which she seemed to apply from halfway across the room. The funny thing is, like rolling with Elliott, you can feel Felicia coming for your ass, but there's nothing you can do to stop her. :)

At the end I grabbed her gi again to pull her into my guard and she said, "time for Crossfit!" So we joined about 30 people to do a 20-10-5 (or 30-20-10 for the advanced people) circuit of kettlebell pulls, shuttle runs and burpees. "The trash can is over there", Felicia told me after I finished.

I told all of the women that I wanted to get a picture of the group to send to the kimonogirls, so I have attached that picture. You can look at it and know that these women are all saying, "hi, kimonogirls!" Keep in mind that this was after Crossfit, so we're all sweaty for a really good reason. :)

Off to get some coffee and walk to Legends for my 10am lesson with Scott.

Have fun tonight! Miss y'all!