Sweet.

Trying to be brief. Which is totally not my style, but I'm limited by time. Hello!

Saturday

The Shihan physically dragged me to the floor to help with the little kids. With some sort of tease about not being able to hide and play invisible. Am getting a bit uncomfortable by his consistent, slow attention. Trying to draw me out. Would much prefer to be invisible, all said.  Urgh.

The benefit of being there for the kids class is that I know, more or less, what we'll be doing in the adult class.  Stances, kata, drills. The kata work was particularly good, because it was led by a red belt I don't know very well, but is a good teacher and had lots of good advice. About timing, but also breathing.  Will try his "three deep breaths" idea and see how it works for me.  Drills were nice - I really am 50x better at drills than six months ago. Was partnered with a young brown belt boy - maybe 13 or 14, but I'm horrible at guessing ages. We worked pretty well together - but that might've been because we were doing led sweeps, and I'm a huge fan of leg-sweeps, now I do judo.

Monday

Krav was great. New instructor - they just finished the instructor's course, and so all the newly minted instructors (who used to be members of the class) are taking turns teaching. Its cool! And really nice to get different teaching styles.

We worked on stomping kicks (mine is better than it was, I can tell!), and then a back-fall followed by a thrust kick from the ground - also much improved. The drill was a forward-choke/head-butt defense. I think I've done it before, but it was good. My partner and I had fun, but also worked hard - I love that combination.  The combination was something like a one hand pop-off with a shoulder dip (for a palm-heel strike), clinch and combatives. I'm still feeling awkward with combatives. One day I'll not feel awkward - my partner (who is now an instructor - go K!) seems to do it fluidly. Something to shoot for...

Grappling was as fun as ever. Worked a sweep from the guard - trapping an arm, hooking the opposite leg over the back, and rolling, if I remember correctly. Also an arm bar from guard that involved wrapping your arm around theirs to put pressure above the elbow - was a lot more difficult than it looked. I found I had to rotate to get the leverage to make it work - probably because I have short arms. Rondori was okay. Nothing spectacular, though I learned not to lock my ankles when I've got someone's back... and that I'm not sure I'll ever get a head and arm triangle!

Sprained my thumb - not sure how. Lovely. Heal fast, pls?

Karate tonight.