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Friday, October 23, 2009

Since When Did I Start Wanting to be Heavy?

We only worked one technique tonight: a half-guard pass to side control tonight. A lot of it hinges on driving your weigh forward and keeping it on the person while you perform the pass. This whole keeping-my-weight on people has been a challenge for me.

I guess it's my instinct not to want to keep my body plastered onto someone or to put my full weight onto them, but that is exactly what I have to do. I've been striving to learn to keep all my holds tight and to keep my body weight driving into the other person the whole time. Still, my instructors are constantly having to tell me, "Keep you hips low," or "Don't rest on your elbows," etc, etc.

Still, tonight I got a compliment after a grapple that made me laugh. "Hey, you were really heavy on me that time." If anyone said that to me outside of Jiu-jitsu, I'd probably cry. But I was really happy to hear that I made someone uncomfortable with my body weight. Haha! It's funny to me how Jiu-jitsu is changing the way I think about my body. I no longer want to be stick thin. I want to be strong and in shape. No, I don't want to be mannish. But I want to be lean and strong.

After working on the guard pass, we spent the entire rest of class grappling. Fabio had us going for 7 minutes each grapple and I was happy to find that I wasn't terribly winded at the end of each one. Of course, I went with several high belts who were trying to help me, so I wasn't going all out. They were trying to help me learn to transition between submissions. "You lost the arm bar, go for the triangle. Now transition to the uma plata." I'm still really slow at seeing the transitions. I think I broadcast what I'm about to do hours before I actually do it. ;)

One small victory tonight was that I did see a transition during a grapple that I usually miss. I was going to an arm bar they did a gable grip and so I tried to do a wrist lock. I was surprised that it actually worked!

Overall, good night tonight. Can't wait to do it again tomorrow morning!

3 comments:

leslie said...

I used to be afraid of being "too heavy" on my partners and so would try to alleviate the weight on them. They finally pointed out that even with all my weight concentrated on them, I don't weigh all that much. Oh. And even when I actually try to control them with weight/pressure, I'm still not that heavy. Oh. So now I have no problem using as much weight as I can on them, and they usually tell me that that was good.

Georgette said...

I totally get this, Allie. Another change for me was realizing that when properly motivated, I was fully capable of dropping 10 lbs in two weeks. (Proper motivation being the fear of missing a weight class and having to not only publicly weigh in, but of being labeled "heavy weight" and ALSO fear of grappling women who tip the scales at 225. Note that this is for a tournament with two classes- 134.9 and below or 135 and above. Yikes.

I will note that I am officially beginning the make-weight diet on Monday October 26, aiming to be certainly sub130 (and unlikely to make sub125) by Nov 7.

A.D. McClish said...

Leslie--I have found the same thing that even when I actually am trying to use my weight, it's not all that effective. But I owe that to my lack of experience and technique, I think, because I am not tiny. I weigh 138lbs, so I should be able to put some amount of pressure on people. lol

Georgette-- I am trying to cut weight for a tournament on the 7th and one on the 21st too. Which one are you doing? I'm doing NAGA on the 21st and the weight class is the same as the one you mentioned. So I HAVE to lose that 5 lbs. I'll be dieting and working cardio right along with you!