Let's Change The Conversation

Request Backup

2012-02-08T16:56:00.000-06:00

Let's just say you are walking to your car. You're alone, and there's no one nearby. It's dark...but did I just see someone hiding there...?

You get the picture, and it's creepy as hell. If you're in danger and there's no one around to hear you scream or call for help, wouldn't it be nice if you could just push a button and someone would know you're in trouble?

I was approached after last weekend's ladies-only class by a student who showed me a new app she's created, and it is that button. I am very excited about this.

The app is called Guardian Trace.

So let's go back to that dark parking lot. Having previously estimated it would take you 4 minutes to reach your car, you had set your GT app for 4 minutes and kept your phone handy.

That someone you saw...you realize an assault is about to happen...to you!!

If you have time, you push the panic button on your phone, since you were clever enough to keep it handy and the app ready. An immediate email or text is sent to whoever you wish to know you are in danger. The notice tells this person (or people) that you've activated the alarm and includes a link with your current location. If they click the link your phone's GPS indicates exactly where you are right now.

If the attack was a blitz and you didn't have time to activate the alarm, it will automatically send the email or text as soon as the 4 minute timer (or however long you've programmed) is up.

The GPS aspect is particularly essential if, God forbid, they are taking you to a second location.

No, this app will not call 911 for you. You should still do that if you can, and the person contacted by the app should do so as well.

The usefulness of Guardian Trace, as I see it, is that if you don't have time to call 911, if you don't even have time to push a button, the app calls for help for you. This is crucial when an attack is sudden or when you simply can't get your hands on your phone.

For goodness sake if you start the timer and you're safe remember to deactivate it or you'll scare everyone half to death.

Full disclosure: As of the writing of this post I have nothing to do with these people, I just like the app.

Guardian Trace is free. If you just want email alerts, it stays free. If you want text alerts (which I think seems like the way to go, since who knows when people will check their email) it's $10 for six months, and more for one year. I don't remember how much more, because I bought 6 months worth of service.

If you're wondering if the GPS means Guardian Trace would make a good tool for stalkers, it won't. The owner of the phone has to activate everything herself or himself, and you can't secretly put it on someone's phone. So if you're looking for a tool to help you stalk people more efficiently, keep looking.

"I Do It Because I Suck and I Hate Sucking"

2012-01-27T16:45:00.000-06:00

This is what my friend said to me today on the phone about her painting classes. It's one of the 2,000,000 things I love about her. She's willing to suck at something, in public, to become good.

I feel her pain on this one. I started putting on weight in 2010 after dealing with a family member's crisis by eating lots of ice cream. I swear it made sense at the time. Then last year I had 2 surgeries & the not-working out and eating train really picked up steam.

That was kind of a disaster, so I've started working out regularly again & started taking Krav classes again, which reminded me why I love this stuff so much in the first place.

But holy crap do I suck. And when you go to class you suck in public.

Last night I went to class completely prepared to suck and was not disappointed, but oh my god it was so much fun!

Matt had us out in the dark choking each other against a storage container with an uneven surface, then choking each other on a table so we couldn't use our feet. We were on our backs on a table of upturned wooden boxes, the attacker standing in our guard & leaning over us choking us. Our feet couldn't reach the ground so they couldn't be used to generate power for the defense. Then we had to run a short distance (suck).

Then the fun began. We learned a couple of parkour jumps over the boxes we'd just been choked on. I have a massive mental block about jumping over things. I can climb a fence & jump over it like an 11 year old taking a regular short cut through the neighbor's yard (which I once was), but jumping over a solid object, even one much shorter than a regular fence is like facing a hungry lion after rolling around in cat food. I soooo did not want to do it. My heart was pounding in my throat and it was made worse by the fact that I knew my feelings were ridiculous.

Everybody else was flying over it like professional stuntmen, but I, um, was not. I wanted to quit, I just didn't want to quit in front of other people. So I kept heaving myself over. I wish I could have wailed each time just like Chewbaca, it would truly have completed the picture.

Then came this little exhaustion drill, punching endlessly, defending surprise chokes, running & jumping over the boxes & getting surprise attacked again. By my third round I was getting tired, too tired to be scared. So I just went up to the box & jumped over it like an 11 year old kid. HA!

The lesson, of course, is that the problem is all in my head. It's interesting how knowing that doesn't help at all.

Me and my super-fly friend who won't suck at painting for long.

I'll go through the same process of sucking again over and over until I reach some sort of internal critical mass where I just begin to jump without fear or hesitation. How many times will it take? I have no idea. I also don't care. What else am I gonna do, sit around and suck at this stuff?

Finished?

2012-01-26T21:24:00.002-06:00

While the investigation is ongoing, there is a chance that Esme Barrera's murderer has been found! The suspect in question was found dead after an apparent suicide. It seems his DNA has been linked to the crime scene on New Year's Eve as well as to a series of attacks last summer.

http://www.citizenobserver.com/cov6/app/alert.html?id=24059

Guest Blogger: Miss Carrie

2012-01-22T17:51:00.000-06:00

I read a story once about a woman who wrote letters to her future self & sealed them up with a "to be opened" date written on the outside of the envelope. The letters gave her future self advice and reminded her what it was like to be younger and still unaware of all the events that had passed since the sealing of the envelope.

Here one of my morning students, Miss Carrie, gives her younger self some life advice.

What would you like to tell your younger or older self?

Dear 16 year-old Carrie,

As I am writing this to you, you are 16 years-old. You are 16 years-old, and you hate your body. You cry endlessly about it, you starve yourself, you think no boy will ever love you and you look in the mirror and hate what you see. As your 29 year-old self, let me break some stuff down for you and drop some truth bombs all over this mess.

Look I get it. You’re in ballet and you will never be 5’11’’ and 103 pounds. You’ve always had hips, but that’s bone there, lady, and unless you saw them off, you’ll always have a bit of an hour-glass body, even at your thinnest. Maybe pursuing something that has a physically impossible standard for you to reach might not have been the best idea [you’ll never make the basketball team, either], but you love to dance so I get why you do it. And you’re raised with all the “beautiful” people on TV and their ridiculously thin bodies and they all talk about how it’s natural and takes really no effort. Well it’s not natural or effortless. I can tell you those people have nothing to do but to maintain that thinness, they sometimes use drugs to achieve it and at least half the celebrities you worship will be in rehab by the time you reach 29 with me. They’re also starving themselves just like you. Just wait until you see what they do to these “perfect” people with Photoshop. You’ll learn what Photoshop is soon enough. Perfection is a joke, there is no such thing.

And here’s the real truth: that is totally ok.

Think about all the time you’ve been wasting crying over how fat you are [which I have to say, at 5’4’’ and 110 pounds, is laughable, but teenagers are stupid. Sorry]. Did that do anything? Do you think your tears will shave down your hip bones or lengthen your legs or enlarge your hands? Why are you wasting time on the things you cannot change? Believe me, when you get into the world and you see how messed up some of it is, there is a lot of energy you can spend on trying to fix things you can actually change.

And those boys you’re so crazy over? Here’s something I know you won’t see coming: they love your butt. I know, that hideous thing at the back of you that no matter how much you starved yourself to get rid of you never could? Yeah, that one. Every guy you will ever be with will be borderline obsessed with it. You want to know why? Because it’s full and womanly, and apparently quite fun to play bongos on. So all these boys you think will never love you will actually love you for some of the things you hate about yourself right now. And if they love your body, why can’t you?

The amazing friends you have now will still be your friends in 13 years, so they are just as awesome as you think they are now. They’ll have spread all over the country [and world], but when you get together, it’s like no time has passed at all. You’ll make new amazing friends, too, people you share your soul with and they to you and it’s one of the best things in your life. And as much as you love them, they love you, too. For all the weird and wonderful and annoying things that make up you and I, they love you. I cannot stress enough to you how loved you are. And since you have impeccable taste in friends and trust their opinion, if they love you so much, why can’t you love yourself?

I won’t lie to you, you’re going to go through some shit. Some really bad shit. But you crawl out of the rubble every time. You’re a survivor and you’re stronger than you think. I’m here to tell you that you get stronger than you can ever imagine. You start taking Krav Maga and push yourself and where you used to pray for spaghetti-like arms, you will enjoy the muscles that you develop. Try not to pass out when I tell you that you will become 20 pounds heavier than you are right now. Ten of that is probably fat, you’re a woman and it’s natural [you also have a crippling apple pie addiction], but ten of that is probably muscle. It suits you. And beyond all comprehension, with that scary 20 extra pounds, you will love your body more than you ever had. Because it’s yours, you’ve put the work in and you feel the strength in you. It’s the combination of your inner strength and developing your outer strength. That +20 on the scale? It’s just a number. It means nothing, it is not you. You are strong and smart and funny and capable and you deliver a mean roundhouse kick. You will eventually stand up for yourself, not take crap from anyone and give back to the world around you. What is not beautiful about that? What is not beautiful about you? A number on scale? A dress size?

In short, just stop worrying about it, you’ve got far bigger fish to fry on this planet in whatever time we wind up getting here. You’re beautiful because you’re you. You may not be thin, but you are strong and that will carry a lot more importance to you as you get older, so try to relax. The world doesn’t end when you hit 120 pounds, or when you hit 130. And you’re actually really looking forward to turning 30, especially since you wasted so much time not enjoying or loving yourself through your teens and 20’s. So stop crying about it, eat a damn sandwich and be with the people you love. Make the world as beautiful as you are.

Oh, and don’t date a guy nicknamed Sleazy. It’s not ironic.

Catch you on the flipside,

29 year-old Carrie

2012-01-17T14:56:00.002-06:00

One of the first questions we often get from a new student is how to make a proper fist. Here's me in my backyard talking about it.

I have no idea why I look so mad in the first frame, or why I'm talking like a robot when my thumb is extended (??).

The book I reference, The Armored Rose by Tobi Beck is out of print, but you can get it used on Amazon. Its the only book I've ever read that discusses the inability of some people to make a fist with a flat top, but its not uncommon to have a student facing that situation. The most common explanation I hear is that the trainee has long fingernails, but I usually look to the bones in the hand for the answer first.

The doctor I talked to about it didn't know if it would damage the hand to hit with a fist made with one or two knuckles sticking up, as if you were frogging someone. If I can get a definitive answer from a hand specialist, I'll post their answer.

As Many As It Takes

2012-01-12T20:35:00.001-06:00

Not a day has gone by since Esme Barrera's murder that she hasn't been the subject of a conversation, news or blog update, or Facebook post.

The man who killed Miss Barrera and assaulted at least one other woman New Year's Eve night is still at large. The following Saturday my free monthly women-only self defense class exploded - I walked out into the lobby of FnF after teaching a small intro class to see the lobby filled with over 50 new women. It blew my mind. Several other martial arts schools in Austin are also offering free women's classes, which is wonderful. The more people who train the better.

However...I read the text version of a KXAN news report a couple of days ago that was really cool, right up until the moment that it made my blood run cold.

There is a kung fu school in town offering 2 free months of free self defense classes to women. This is no small thing, as they have to pay an instructor, the light bill etc. The school rep was also giving some good advice and I was very happy reading the story until I read that they teach women you should only ever strike an attacker once and then run away. Grrr...

His larger point, which I agree with, is that it's not appropriate to increase the danger you're already in by standing there trying to beat the guy up if you have the opportunity to escape. This is true. Get the hell out of there and call the cops. It's the reason I run wildly out of class sometimes during a demonstration after I successfully defend against my "attacker".

What I strongly disagree with is the idea that you should assume that one punch will neutralize an attacker. Hey, maybe it will take one punch. That would be awesome. Maybe it will take 3 punches, 2 elbows to the face, and a strike to the groin. Maybe you can start shrieking like a banshee, as one of this fugitive's victims did, and he'll split. What I'm getting at is we have no idea what it will take to neutralize an attacker in some future unforseen attack!

I'm pretty much never the strongest or fastest person on the mat. Sad fact. But I'm certainly willing to keep trying if at first I don't succeed. So if I seriously wanted to harm someone and had the means and opportunity to do so, I really think it would take it would take more than one punch from most people to stop me. I'm not saying they couldn't stop me. Punching me in the face would certainly be a good start. Think how much more true this would be when trying to defend against someone bigger, stronger, and accustomed to violence.

Ultimately, I want to say this: 1) You CAN learn to defend yourself, but you must be willing to do whatever the situation requires, whether that's striking once and running, fighting like a demon, screaming, hiding, etc.

2) Please use your own brain when it comes to people telling you about self defense. If it doesn't sound right, ask for an explanation. It's not rude, just ask nicely. But ASK. And then try it out for yourself.

Make A Change

2012-01-04T10:56:00.000-06:00

I've been an avid reader my whole life. Books have always been a means of education as well as escape in my happiest as well as darkest moments.

Right now I'm finishing up a book called Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.

Switch

It's a fascinating study in how change happens - or doesn't happen - in large organizations, small groups, or individuals. Some of it you've no doubt heard before: if you want to make it to Krav class more often but have a crazy schedule, stash some boxing gloves and workout clothes & shoes in the trunk of your car. That way, if the opportunity to come to the studio pops up in your schedule, you'll be ready to hit the mat. They call this "shaping the path" or making it easy to do the right thing.

There's lots of practical advice here, and they make it both entertaining and easy to see how you can really change things for the better in your personal life and at work.

For me, though, the one point I can't get out of my head centers on the issue of identity. Change happens when you believe you are "the kind of person who..."

I've seen this over and over again on the mat.

The biggest roadblock to getting females on the mat centers on their beliefs about their identity (this is true of males as well, of course, but its historically been more a part of the male identity to participate in combat arts).

We spend our whole lives learning to be sugar and spice and everything nice. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

"I could never hurt anybody" This comes from women who will go after a heavy bag like she's a hungry honey badger, but if a human holds a punch shield she instantly throws little tap-tap-tap "punches". "They won't like me if I'm 'mean' "So she's completely capable, but unable to make herself strike hard. Having struggled with this myself in the past, I feel for her. I was only able to break the habit because my male friends who train kept hitting me hard and yelling HIT ME! I love them for that. However it still took years before I'd really hit someone, and if it's been a while, I still involuntarily deliberately miss or pull back the first few strikes. I'm a nice lady.

So the question becomes: how do I shorten that time period for other females? How can I save them years of believing they just can't strike aggressively, that it's not who they are? Maybe for some of them it's really not who they are, but I doubt that's true for most. We are a war-like species, and that includes the ladies.

As Rory Miller says, there is a story we tell ourselves about ourselves. That story is often what is the most damaged after an attack. The person who thought it would never happen to them comes to see their whole existence, justice, and humanity differently. The person who thought they would be brave, and wasn't, can burn with shame over the incident for the rest of their lives. The person who thought they would be weak, and wasn't, can begin to see opportunities they were completely blind to before. They begin to see their behavior in that one moment as who they are, even though it was only a moment in time.

How do I shorten the time period for females? How do I convince her to allow herself to train aggressively without spending the years it took me? I asked Jeff about this a couple of months ago, and he replied that maybe there are no shortcuts. Maybe if you want to climb that particular mountain you just have to put in the time. I really hope he's wrong. Too many students have quit to go take up a kinder gentler pastime because while they enjoyed class they believe they just aren't the kind of person who can be strong enough to fight.

I believe we create the person we become. If you are willing to defend your child - and most women will fight like Hellcats to protect their child - you can learn to be willing to defend yourself as well. You are worth defending. You can make the switch.

2011-12-28T17:01:00.001-06:00

My friend Beverly is getting her MBA in Digital Media, which I frankly did not even know existed as a degree, but she has become a window through which I view a whole world outside my own.

See here her blog entry detailing how she taught me to join the current century.

If there's one thing I've learned in this job it's that people have talents and skills that make life brighter and better and that they're almost always happy to share them with you. This girl is going to do big things one day, mark my words (you heard it here first!).

Get 'Em While They're Young

2011-12-22T15:15:00.000-06:00

My gift to you: a video of a 4 year old and a 10 year old smacking me.

These brothers are learning to practice defense against headlock from the side, a common schoolyard hold. Once you tell a little kid they can hit you as hard as want and they won't get in trouble they'll take that ball and run with it.

The belly strike they're giving me is meant to be a groin strike, which we usually train striking the top of the thigh if your partner is not wearing a cup. Since my legs were black and blue from training arm pulls with them last week, we moved the hits up to my stomach. Once the technique is learned I'll put a cup on and let them make the groin strike.

The video wouldn't load to the blog, so click this link to view it on my Facebook page. Enjoy.

Click here!

Guess What?

2011-12-19T10:07:00.000-06:00

I was awarded Instructor of the Year at Fit and Fearless last night at the staff Christmas Party! Yay! Thanks, y'all!

New interview

2011-12-15T15:43:00.000-06:00

A couple of years ago a cop friend of mine told me something that's been clanging around in my head ever since. She said, "The police are not responsible for your safety. YOU are responsible for your safety. The police are just there to clean up the mess."

That made a huge impression on me and has seriously influenced my philosophy when I teach. Since most of us don't walk around with a cop at our sides, we need to be proactive about our own safety.

Sometimes people we live with are the ones that pose a danger to us, and that can leave us feeling totally vulnerable and alone. Yesterday I posted an interview I did with Lisa Lucas, formerly of the Domestic Violence Unit at the Travis County Sheriff's Department (she is now a patrol deputy).

There's a lot of good information in there about what to do if you find yourself in danger at the hands of a loved one. Even if you are not in that situation and don't expect to be (of course, who does expect to be?) it's still worth a listen. The information you learn may help change the life of someone you know.

Check it out here, and thanks to Officer Lucas for taking the time to help us out.

Mean Girls

2011-11-26T15:38:00.001-06:00

This has happened to me twice... I'm chatting with a girl I just met & she asks what I do for a living. Once I tell her I'm a Krav Maga instructor she gets all tickled and says she ought to train, and tells me what she does for fun: she goes down to Sixth Street on the weekend and picks fights with guys. This is to say, she says or does something so irritating or offensive to a male stranger that he tells her to shut up, go away, etc. So she punches him in the face as hard as she can.

Since a guy will get hauled off to jail if he punches a female, he feels like he can't retaliate (or, in this case, defend himself) so she "won". And these girls were pretty proud of themselves when they told me this & expected me to applaud them. It was everything I could do to restrain myself from removing their teeth.

The truth is, I was so shocked and offended by them that I really had no idea what to say. So I got very quiet and still and said that if they act like that they can't train at our school.

Really, I chickened out. I tend to say cruel things when I'm really angry and I want to avoid that, plus I was so stunned by their behavior that my brain shut down. Saying Fit and Fearless won't accept students who bully and attack others its true, but it was still a cop out on my part. Here's what I'd like to say:

*If you punch people in the face for fun you deserve to get punched back. I don't care who you are. There are people who engage in this behavior because they are with a friend who trains in martial arts & the puncher assumes they're immune from retaliation because their friend will "take care of it". If I see someone acting like this I will not help them. After they get their ass beat, I'll tell their mother on them.

*Young lady, the man who is not punching you back is not refraining because you're so tough. He is using self control because he doesn't want to go to jail and/or he's been taught not to hit a female under any circumstances. The fact that you're exploiting this makes you a bad person. I will now refer you to the previous point.

*You're making me look bad. Many people assume that women who engage in the "hard" martial arts are crazy or mean angry bitches with a chip on their shoulder. I make a point to dress very girly and be nice and friendly so that people understand that normal girls like to train, too. Your behavior is reinforcing the stereotype of the angry-nutjob fighter girl.

*You are preventing other women from training. Yes, this is a continuation of the previous point, but the last one was mostly about me. This is about every female who has been told there's something wrong with her because she wants to train. It's for every female who has hidden or downplayed the fact that she trains because she doesn't want to be judged as being damaged or warped or hating men. Getting women to walk in the door of a martial arts studio and accept that it's okay to hit and be hit on the mat is difficult enough. If other females believe that it's okay for normal women to step on the mat and go hard they're more likely to give it a try. The fact that you assault people then brag about it makes sane women want to avoid anything that even resembles you.

*I'm not quite sure how to put this, but I also believe that a person who has been subjected to an injustice, as the men you assault have been, tends to adopt a "never again" attitude. I don't blame them. What this means to me is that he is more likely to strike a woman in the future, and it will probably not be a woman who is as prepared for violence as you seem to fantasize you are. Violence against women is endemic in the human race. I suspect you may be cementing the belief batterers hold that we all have it coming.

I think that about covers it. If anyone can tell me how to say that in under one minute and without resorting to the swear words that are so dear to me, I'm taking suggestions.

Just Do Something

2011-11-15T20:36:00.001-06:00

"While Barkley continued to straddle the woman, who was crying, two women walked by on the street and did nothing, the affidavit said."

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/man-jailed-in-attacks-on-women-in-west-1969085.html

Just a few days ago, two women walked by a man obviously assaulting a woman near the UT campus. They didn't bother calling 911.

Now here's the thing: I know why people act like this. Anyone who has ever been subjected to my Kitty Genovese drill knows, too. I don't care, it's still infuriating.

(I'm not the only one who's angry. Read my friend Jennie's blog on the same subject.)

What happens is this...you're minding your own business and something shocking happens. Someone is suddenly assaulted right there in front of you. Probably it begins and ends before you even understand what's going on. This is why people just stand around there looking around in YouTube videos when "something bad happens". It's been over for several seconds before the bystanders even start whispering among themselves "did you see that?!".

Or maybe it's not over that fast and you have the opportunity to help. But you probably don't. Seriously. The more shocked you are by that statement the less likely you are to actually be of any use under pressure.

Because...your brain freezes. (Whaaaaa?...)

Then denies. (No, that can't be happening...I've misunderstood. Are they filming a video? You know, the film industry has been booming in Austin. But it looks like he's really punching that guy...no, I'm imagining that, it's not that bad)

Then it freaks & goes numb. (What am I supposed to do? Nobody else is doing anything. I don't want to get hurt. I don't want to get in trouble. He could have a knife! Nooooo.....just keep going, he'll be fine.)

This is normal. Unfortunately, most people get stuck here.

What it comes down to is that people don't know what to do, so they do nothing.

But as I tell my students after the Kitty G. drill, you are going to have to live with your decision, whatever it is, for the rest of your life.

If you're reading this blog, you probably have some knowledge of or at least an interest in self-defense training, and therefore some clue of how and when to intervene.

But what if you are unable or unwilling to physically jump into an assault in progress? Should you just pretend you didn't see it? Not if you want to sleep at night.

Try this:

*Just yell STOP!! as loudly and commandingly as you can. Do not make a request. Make a COMMAND. I was shocked when this actually worked for me once out in public. Let them know you see them and what they're doing. If you are not actively in immediate danger do not leave the area until it is safe for you and for the victim. Stay on the job like a dog on a bone.

*Hold up your smartphone like you're filming or taking pictures & say you got them on film. Hopefully you actually do. You may have to run like hell if they turn on you, so be ready. In the time it takes them to process what just happened & shift gears you can have a nice head start. Yes, I'm being completely serious.

*Call 911 & say loudly that you're doing so. Remember, you're not just trying to catch a criminal, you're trying to stop a crime in progress.

*Recruit anyone else who may be around to help you. Bang on doors or wave down cars if necessary. Remember, you are not making a request, you are ordering them to act: "Call 911 NOW, I'll watch where he goes." People are astonishingly obedient. Mostly they just want someone to tell them what to do. Again, I'm being serious. The more sudden and frightening the situation, the more obedient they become to clear and authoritative orders.

Please know I'm not talking about consensual fighting. If two people you don't know are in a brawl, I'm not convinced that's your problem.

But if a man is straddling and choking a weeping and struggling woman on the sidewalk and you just stroll on by, you should carry around business cards that say Rotten Bastard so the rest of us can avoid you like the plague you are.

Please do one thing for me by Sunday. Please start a conversation with someone you know that goes something like this..."Did you hear about that woman who was attacked near campus? Those women saw it but walked by and did nothing! Can you believe that? What would you do? I wonder what I would really do? Well, I guess I could get out my phone..."

Plant the seed that blooms into citizens who know what they can do in an emergency. This is the first step to a person actually doing something.

And if you are someone who is willing to jump in physically to help a victim of crime, I hope you train, and I hope you're training with me. You're the kind of person that's awesome to have around.

The Flip Side

2011-09-17T15:16:00.001-05:00

What goes up, must come down.

Let's talk about an important and often overlooked aspect of training:recovery. In Krav we are all about GO GO GO, grrrrr HARDER!!! It can be easy to burn out.

Some people look at rest and recovery as something for the weak, when they are actually critical to remaining strong. This becomes even more important as we pass our mid-twenties. As I've gotten older (I have a polaroid of myself riding a dinosaur to the local tar pit) I find it's not difficult to perform while training, but recovering takes longer, which can hinder the next session.

If you haven't built active recovery into your training, don't wait...do it now.

Try these methods:

Stretch. You have time to stretch.

Speaking of stretching...you have time to stretch. Do it. Ballistic stretching (not bouncing, but not holding a stretch for long periods either) before training, and extended, longer-held stretches after training. This will keep your body supple and prevent the pulls and tears of muscle and tendon that will keep you off the mat. We do not have post-class stretching in Krav simply because there isn't enough time. Do it on your own, preferably immediately. You can plop yourself down in the lobby or go outside.

During my morning combatives/conditioning classes (ahem...Mondays & Wednesdays @ 6:15 a.m.) we always spend the last 5 minutes of class stretching. Do it do it do it.

Massage

For "normal" sedentary people massage may be an extravagance, but for us it's a godsend. Massage will work out the kinks that inevitably develop through training. You've undoubtedly been told by your instructor to "not be so tense" when you punch. The tension in your shoulders sticks around, particularly on the arm with which you throw the cross. Have the therapist work on that - also I have them do extra work on my forearms, wrists & hands, and calves & feet. Those areas take a lot of punishment in training, so help them out.

My husband & I go to Massage Envy once a month, but if you feel that's more than you want to pay, try going to a massage school. Their treatments are half the price or less of a regular massage and they do a fantastic job - because you have to fill out a grade sheet for them afterward & they want a good grade. Also, there's no tipping, because they aren't professionals yet. I used to go here every two weeks & was never disappointed, but there are loads of other schools in town.

If you want hard-core extreme-o napalm massage, try Airrosti. When you see people walking around with what looks like colored masking tape all over them, pity them and envy them. They've probably been to the Airrosti guys over on Bee Caves Rd. It hurts and it's expensive, but it works.

Chiropractic

I've been seeing chiropractors Dr. Bob Levine & Dr. Colette Zygmont for years & I'm always looser & in less pain when I walk out of their office than when I walk in. Dr. Bob has his office right in the Fit and Fearless studio, and charges students only $20 for an adjustment, which is a steal.

Yoga

If you haven't tried the Yoga for Athletes classes at Fit and Fearless, do yourself a favor & get in there. The class is included in your membership so you're already paying for it, and it will help you become more flexible and stronger.

We are incredibly lucky to have Dr. Jonci Jenson teaching yoga here. She's a Naturopathic Doctor, so she really knows her way around the human body, and her class is not about wearing cute yoga clothes and saying om. Dr. Jonci has also trained in Krav Maga and MMA (as has Dr. Bob) , so she knows where you hurt and will teach you how to take care of it. For general health issues you can listen to her weekly radio show or visit her office. Fore more information click here.

Any yoga you have access to will help your flexibility, strength, and breathing, so give it a try.

Sleep

Loads of stuff has been written about the importance of getting enough sleep, so I'll just say this. One night this week, just go to bed half an hour earlier. If it makes you feel better, do it again.

Drink water

Try this: get a large plastic glass & put it by your bathroom sink. In the morning fill up the glass & slam it as you get ready, before your coffee. In addition to everything else you drink that day, slam one more glass during the day & one in the evening. It'll help your insides not feel like all the plants outside look.

Supplements

I am a supplement maniac, but this is a pretty controversial subject, and one that people on all sides can be loudly passionate about. If you don't care to supplement, be sure you're eating a very nutrient rich diet & hydrating all day. I will say that when the economy tanked our income shrank so I cut out our supplements. I didn't recover as well from training, so I put them back in. Do whatever you want, but it works for me.

Do something different

People who train in Krav Maga are usually pretty obsessed with it. It easily gets to the point that it's all you think about, talk about, and want to do. As fun as this crazy thrill ride is, it's also a ticket for a ride on the Burn Out Express. Regularly do something completely different, both physically and mentally. Personally, I walk my dogs on the greenbelt, looking for new plants & animals and also attend a montly book club with nice ladies who don't do Krav and don't want to. Taking yourself completely out of a training environment (or work, or the one person you spend all your time with) gives your mind and body the break they need to make the best of your time on the mat. It will keep you from becoming a one-dimensional person & push the reset button on your brain.

This is a list of all the stuff I do (though the sleep thing often eludes me). Try the ones that make sense to you, and I'd love to hear anything you do to recharge so I can try it too.

Preparing For The October Belt Test

2011-08-31T20:08:00.000-05:00

If you're planning to take the Level 1 or 2 belt test on October 8, now is the time to prepare. One of the most practical steps you can take is to make use the book Complete Krav Maga by John Whitman and Darren Levine.

When you signed up to take classes you probably received a little white booklet that lists all the techniques in each level, plus other information. If you didn't receive a white booklet, ask at the front desk. We were out of them for a while, but I've seen some new ones floating around lately. Anyway...the problem I had with the white booklet when I was preparing for my first belt test was that I couldn't remember the names of the techniques. I could do them, I just didn't know what they were called, so just reading a list of names meant little to me.

So I bought Complete Krav Maga & solved my woes. And I still use it within an inch of it's life. Here's a current pic of my book.

Every technique for each level through brown belt is covered, along with step by step photos. Use the book (or the white booklet, if you prefer) to make sure you've practiced each technique you'll be tested on. Once I've been taught a technique in class I put a little check mark on the page. Once I'd practiced the technique with my trainer in my weekly private lesson I'd put his initial on the page. So if I had both a check and an "H", I knew I'd done the movement at least twice. As the test drew near, if there were no symbols on a technique, it was time to get busy.

In no way do I mean to imply that practicing something only twice means it has been mastered & you're ready to test it. But if you're leafing through the book as you prepare & see no symbols, ask your instructor to cover it, and/or practice it in your private lessons. That way there'll be no surprises in the test. There are certain techniques, particularly in level 1, that we cover like crazy (cough, cough...palm heels & groin strikes...cough, cough). These are the go-to go-crazy moves we want you to have mastered in case of a real attack, & that takes a lot of repetitions. Unfortunately, if you're only able to train a couple of times a week, that can mean you miss out completely on some of the techniques you'll be tested on. Use your booklet or Complete KM to make sure you've trained all the moves at your level, and don't hesitate to ask us to cover something in class.

Before you test

Between now and the day of the test you need to get an instructor to sign a Permission to Test form. Ask the instructor you've worked with the most, as they need to know you're ready. If we sign your permission form & you fail, it makes us look bad. So if I don't teach you regularly, I won't sign your form. Please do this & sign up & pay for the big day at least a week before the October 8 test date. If not enough people sign up, the test will be postponed. It's a major buzzkill to expect to participate in the test the next day, be nervous the night before & walk in to sign up & find out either that you're not eligible to test because you didn't get your slip signed or the test has been cancelled.

The day of the test

There will be a "seminar" that anyone can attend. Every technique from stance and movement through the end will be taught & practiced. The seminar is actually the longest part of the day, and is required for all testers. Afterward there will be a short lunch break - don't eat too much or you'll just throw it up later! If, after the seminar the instructor feels that you won't pass, you will be asked/told to not test. Ask any questions you have at the seminar, during the exam no questions will be answered. Bring more water & sports drinks than you think you need, along with some protein bars, fruit, shotz bloks, or whatever you need to keep you going for a full day of hard training. You can bring a small cooler if you like your drinks cold.

Any questions? Shoot me a line or grab one of us in the lobby, we're happy to help. Good luck & train hard!

Wheelchair Manifesto

2011-08-21T08:51:00.003-05:00

A couple of times I've had the pleasure of having a person in a wheelchair show up to try out a Krav class. I love this. Thinking about how to put someone at an uncommon disadvantage in the best possible position to survive an attack and get home safe gets my brain juices flowing in the right direction.

In both cases the person was worried about "holding back" the rest of the class. I'm going to say it out loud: stop it. You have as much right to train as anybody, and we have a spot for you on the mat right there with everybody else. Almost every student comes to us with some sort of disadvantage to training, some are just more visible than others. Every student who sticks it out improves and grows stronger. Every single one.

Take a look at what you can do if you give yourself the chance here. Andy Campbell and the others are not special and they don't have superpowers. They just kept showing up to train.

Here are some things you can do to put yourself in the best possible position for success:

*address the issue of strength. Someone who wants to dominate or harm another chooses their victim because they think they're weak. Some people will assume that because of the chair. Surprise them by being strong.

First, grip strength. Unless the person in the chair has a neurological or muscular condition that causes weakness, he or she will probably have better than average grip strength (assuming they regularly manually manipulate the chair). Make it better. If you need to grab someone & get them close enough to keep punching them with your other hand, you want to be strong enough to do that. Get one of those squeezy things & squeeze it. A lot. Engage the pinky. CrossFit coach Jeremy Ross tells me the pinky is an important & frequently overlooked component of grip strength.

Second, arm & shoulder strength. There are loads of dumbell and barbell excercises you can do at the gym (overhead press, bench press, face pulls, pull ups, etc.) Also do exercises that manipulate your own body weight, because that's what you'll be doing if you get dumped out of the chair & have to fight from there. If you can't do pushups yet, start facedown on the ground. Get up to your elbows as explosively and quickly as you can. From your elbows, get up to your hands. Again, do it with as much power and speed as you've got. Keep it up until you can explode from being face down onto a high pushup position. Now, start cranking out pushups.

Do combat crawls on various surfaces. If you've only done them on the mat, the parking lot is going to be quite a surprise.

Pull yourself up from a downed position using various rails or bars. Get creative. At the same time you'll get strong.

Figure out the best method to get quickly back into the chair from various positions & hone that skill. It's super important.

***Occasionally do all these things without taking the time to use your hands to rearrange your legs so they lay straight. In a crisis you won't have time to make sure everything is all perfectly lined up. Training from whatever position you land in will give you a tremendous mental and physical advantage when you need to put your skills to work for real.

When you come to class, try to have some sort of locking mechanism on your wheels that will prevent you from rolling backward when you punch. But if you don't have it yet don't wait to come until that's in place. We can back you up to a wall to give you some stability, but you will eventually need to be able to stabilize yourself in an outside environment. You will also need to strap your feet down so they don't drop onto the floor & trip up your movement. However, the straps should have a breakaway component so you can separate yourself from the chair if you get dumped. I have an idea about how to do this, but I suspect the wheelchair community already has a better plan in place that I just don't know about.

Now let's train!

About Getting Hit In The Face Really Hard

2011-08-10T15:24:00.013-05:00

In seven years of training, first in Karate & then in Krav Maga, I've only been hit really hard in in the face three times, and all were accidents.

The first time was during a drill and a big ol' Texas linebacker thought his friend was his "attacker". He didn't know that his friend & I had exchanged places & where the friend's tombstone pad had been, my face now was. That big ol' boy whipped around & BOOM punched me right in the mouth. Thank God he was wearing those little fingerless MMA gloves. I always expected to go down if I took a hit like that, but instead I just wordlessly turned around and marched straight into the ladies room to count my teeth. They were all there, the only weirdness was a big swollen black spot on my bottom lip, so I just marched back onto the mat & finished the drill. I was shaking so hard I was useless, but quitters never win, etc. My neck was completely stiff & sore for 3 days, which was the only fallout.

The second time was during Phase B. Long story short, I missed a punch defense & my partner was going very hard and not wearing gloves. When he punched me I saw a weird simultaneous flash of light and flash of blackness, then turned into an angry 3 year old. I clenched my fists & stiffened my arms at my sides & marched back & forth, stomping. I was trembling so hard my jaw was chattering (standard operating procedure for me under an adrenaline surge). But here's the thing. After my intial flash of anger (not at my partner, just a surge of general anger) I looked at the instructor, AJ Draven, who wore a look of complete boredom. He was peeking at me discreetly from the corner of his eye, pretending to ignore me. This is how I knew I was okay. I've always been grateful to AJ for handling it that way. So I stomped over to my partner, put up my dukes & said, "Go". Here is the result:

Yes, my lips are also split.

And now for something completely different. This past weekend I attended an instructor training with John Whitman. During a pause in my training I stepped completely off the mat & was standing in the lobby looking out the window. A guy in the class, about 6'3" & 225 lbs., delivered a powerful inside slap kick (I didn't know there was such a thing as a powerful inside slap kick!) to a padholder who wasn't paying attention, and the pad flew out of his hand. I happened to turn around at that moment and saw this giant black thing right in front of my face. It looked like a giant asteroid hurtling toward earth in an old sci-fi movie. BOOM! Right in the money-maker! My head flew back hard, sending my weight over my heels ,and in slow motion I sank to the ground onto my behind. Yes, I went down! I don't like it, but facts is facts. Here you can see the road rash.

And here's the thing: there was no flash of anger, no adrenaline surge, no uncontrollable shaking. I just instantly turned into a zombie. The guys were surrounding me yelling, "OHMYGODAREYOUOKAY?" and I had no idea, so I just sat there in a haze until John walked over and barked, "She's fine, get back to work!" And you know what? I WAS fine. But if he'd said, "OMG, call 911!", I would not have been fine. My stupor left me in a highly suggestible state, which is disturbing, because I like to believe I am someone who thinks for herself. As the science teacher in the group put it, "A six pound pad traveling at at about 40 miles per hour. That's a lot of velocity!" But John said I was fine and I believed him, so I walked onto the mat and got back to work.

The take-home lesson: the difference between being focused and at least aware that you're in a situation where you should protect yourself, and being totally taken by surprise (as in a sucker punch) can mean the difference between going home safe and going home in a bag. Had I been on the street & taken a hard sucker punch to the face and then lots of follow-up punches and kicks, could I have snapped out of my zombie-like state and defended myself? I used to think I could, but now I'm not so sure. I'll tell you one thing - I'm damn well going to work on it.

What can I do - what can YOU do - to prepare yourself for such a scenario? First, you can accept that it is possible that it can happen to you. I was surprised and embarassed by the fact that it took several seconds to snap out of it. Second, when you catch yourself hesitating in class during a self-defense technique, GO. Just fight. If you do the "wrong" defense and counterattack, you will still reap more benefit than if you allow yourself to stand there trying to remember what you were supposed to do. Third, when you're out in the world, pay attention to your surroundings. If I hadn't been off in la-la land thinking about when it would rain, I believe I would have recovered faster. Focus on aggression and shortening the freeze every time you're in class. I will, too.

Shots Fired

2011-07-11T22:35:00.007-05:00

Here's my review of the Sure Shots shooting seminar hosted by The Blackstone Group (BSG Services) and Dillo Dynamics: It was awesome!

We trained all day, from 9 to 6, and still only barely scratched the paint job on the surface of what there is to know about firearms. I have begun to think you could study for years and still find there was more to discover.

What put me at ease anyway is that I've had weekly shooting sessions with my friend Heath for the last 2 months - I buy his ammo & pay the lane fees, he points my gun in the right direction for me. I'm supposed to be practicing to not look like a goober when we do weapons at my next Phase training, but it paid off in spades yesterday. I was quite nervous shooting the first 5 rounds, but after that it began to feel familiar and was just fun in the (105 degree) sun.

Making it even better was the volunteers Blackstone brought out. Each group of 2 shooters had their own coach, who stayed with them throughout the day. We had 15 shooters, so that's a lot of people volunteering to stand out in the heat. My coach was a man I already know (I teach his son & he helped me out tremendously once when I was injured in class). I confess I was hoping he'd coach me for a bit, but fortunately I ended up with him the whole day, which means I hit the jackpot.

And what a day it was! I ended up using one of their Glock 19's (which I now know won't be the type of gun I purchase, as I had trouble with the magazine release all day) & we shot standing still, moving, behind concealment (we learned the difference between concealment and cover), and shooting while holding the gun in various positions. We also shot one-handed, which was easier than I expected - which brings me to another point. Every lady but me (if you read the last blog post you know this was an all-female shoot), found it painful to shoot holding the weapon close to the body. It was too hard on the wrists.

However, I have an old wrist injury that has forced me to do push ups on my knuckles (instead of supporting my weight on my palms) for well over a year now. I found shooting without the support of my extended arms to be painless & pretty easy, so there you have it. Start doing your push ups on your knuckles!

I also shot a John Browning 1911, a timeless work of art that is smooth as silk but surprisingly heavy.

I shot an M-freaking-4. That's what's in the photo.

And the queen: The H&K UMP .45. This is the gun I taunted and caressed after I shot it. My coach actually had to remind me "it's just a tool" because I kept whispering to it. Seriously, I could feel my testosterone levels skyrocket after I shot it, and I was jabbering away about it non-stop at breakfast this morning.

And I want to do it again. Oh, yes I do.

I was talking with a friend this afternoon about getting a group together to go out and do another seminar, so if you're interested, contact me via the blog comments or on Facebook.

And another thing. I want to thank the folks who worked the seminar for their time, expertise, patience, and attitude. These men all looked like they just stepped off the cover of Military Hero magazine, and they were just the nicest and most generous people ever. Females engaging in a stereotypically male pursuit often face eye-rolling men who just put up with their presence to be polite, but do not take the females seriously. This was NOT the case at this seminar. Regardless of the student's level of experience she was treated as a serious student, capable of achieving any goal she was willing to earn.

There was also a woman volunteer, my friend Teresa J. of the Austin Police Department. Teresa consistently sets the standard for professionalism while still being completely approachable and generally awesome. My great thanks to her and her most excellent husband Jason for inviting me to the seminar.

Bang! Bang!

2011-07-06T14:19:00.002-05:00

Well, I thought I was doing that other thing, but now I'm doing this! There's a women-only shooting seminar this Sunday out in Liberty Hill and the cost is only $50 + ammo. Shooting guns is the most fun I've ever had wearing earmuffs. You should come out, too, ladies!!

Who Knows?

2011-07-05T12:08:00.006-05:00

I have no idea who this guy is, but...

There's a seminar in Austin at Castle Hill Fitness this Friday, July 8 on recovering from trauma. He is a Somatic Experiencing practitioner, similar to Jules Shore. You can read my interview with Jules here, to learn more about the effects of trauma on the body & mind.

The seminar is from 6:30-7:30, and it's FREE. To get more information, click on the event's Facebook page.

I have no idea what to expect but I'll probably check it out, as this sort of thing holds enless fascination for me. If you're there, too, come shake my paw!

Ladies of Legend

2011-07-02T14:30:00.003-05:00

Today's Ladies-only class was awesome. I totally dropped the ball and forgot to advertise the upcoming class, plus it was a holiday weekend, and I still had a group of ladies in cute clothes ready to whoop some butt.

After some warmup drills we worked on the concept of bursting in toward a pull. I didn't teach arm drags or hair pulls, just bursting in, period. Then we played monkey-in-the-middle, where the defender is dragged around by her hair, clothes, arms, whatever we could grab while still holding a pad for her to attack. She also had to put up with being body-slammed with the pads, then turning to attack that pad.

From there we went on to practice a scenario that a fellow student described to me of what happened when she was attacked by her ex. He (once again) assaulted her and attempted to murder her - but she fought him off! We all defended exactly that attack, using that defense, against each person in the class. So, student who told me your story (I'll tell you who you are privately), you just helped a lot of people survive that type of attack thanks to your courage under attack and your willingness to share!

Next we worked the concept of running away vs. running to. The difference is largely mental (like so much else we do) and you can actually see the switch in the student when she makes the change. Very exciting to watch that happen, we'll do the drill again in the morning level 1/2 classes next week so the guys get a crack at it, too.

The last thing we did was create a plan of what we will do in case of attack. Now obviously, you can't plan for every scenario - and it's usually the last thing one expects that actually happens. But by creating a basic plan and talking it out with someone, and even practicing it, your chances of success (meaning survival) increase tremendously.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when creating your first plan:

Who do you spend the most time with? It may be your co-workers. Create the plan based on a scenario in which you are with that person or persons. Are you at the location of your job? Are you out to lunch together? We are not trying to make a prediction here, just practicing thinking of these things objectively and logically.

If you are in the office, where is the most logical place for a person to attack you? Would they just be entering from the lobby? At your desk? In the parking lot?

This person you are frequently with...do they know how to fight? Will they be able to talk to the person or distract him (or her) while you get help or initiate defenses? Can they call the cops for you?

What is the fastest exit you both can get to? What if they chase you through the exit? What is the fastest safe place you can reach?

Bring these questions up to the person you have in mind. They may roll their eyes at you, accuse you of being a scaredy-cat, etc. Tell them your teacher told you to have this conversation and keep at them.

A plan does not consist of, "yeah, I'll probably fight and scream, you should just take off".

A plan looks more like "I'll distract him while you run. You always have your phone on you, so dial 911-SEND. You will keep running. Do not look back to see if I'm okay, do not come back for any reason. I will fight the second he is distracted and you start running. If I survive I will go straight to the Starbucks next door. Tell the 911 dispatcher the ambulance may find me there instead of in the office. If I can't escape the office I'll barricade myself in Bob's office. His desk is near the door, I can use it the block the door." (Question: Can you move Bob's desk? You'd better find out.)

Having a plan is empowering and can keep you alive. Having a pre-set place to run TO makes you run faster (seriously), and makes it possible for help to reach you sooner.

Lastly, sometimes the people we spend time with (even those who love us) don't really take our efforts in Krav Maga seriously. They might believe we are too small, too nice, too whatever. Maybe they think violence doesn't really happen to nice people. We are cautioned to "just give him your purse" (as if that would stop a rapist) or we are otherwise counseled that we will get hurt if we fight.

Of course, we will get hurt if we fight. We might even die.

We will also get hurt and maybe even die if we do NOT fight - if the attacker wants to hurt us. He may even take pleasure in that.

In certain situations, compliance with an attacker might ensure your survival. In others it might get you killed. You must listen to your gut during the violent encounter itself.

But know this: even a little bee can sting. Even a small person can defend himself or herself against an attacker. You are worth defending, and you can do it.

Need an example? Check out this awesome entry on Badass of the Week. (Warning: profanity!)

Next time someone tells you that you are too small to defend yourself, remember Badass of the Week's little Rukhsana Kauser and the terrorist who beat her family so he could rape her. If she could defend herself and her family, you can do it. See you next month, ladies!

I Glove U

2011-06-14T09:29:00.020-05:00

New students are commonly confused about which hand protection is best for them. I realized last week when when two different students showed up wearing weightlifting gloves that it might be time to tackle the glove issue. Different gloves (or wraps) have different functions, read below to see which might be right for you. Note: When you start training your friends might try to help you out by giving you a pair of gloves they aren’t using. If you’re unsure of whether you should use them in class, look at the placement of the padding on the glove. In Krav Maga class you will want protection for your knuckles (from impact) and for your wrist (from buckling upon impact). Weightlifting gloves have pads on the palm and inner fingers which will not help you when punching. Batting gloves have no padding and aren’t helpful in class either, though I do use them at the Box when doing pull ups.

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Wraps are traditionally worn under boxing gloves to further protect the knuckles and wrist. Wraps alone offer minimal protection for the knuckles, but they’re certainly better than nothing. They offer excellent protection for the wrist, and have the added benefit of being completely adjustable, both in placement and in snugness. They also leave the fingers completely free to grab your opponent or your water bottle. Plus, let’s face it, wraps look pretty cool.

Wrist wraps are just what they claim to be, consisting of a stretchy fabric that supports the wrist, with velcro closure and a loop for the thumb to stabilize the wrap. These are a good choice if you need a little extra protection for the wrist and nothing more. They are a good stabilizer to try when you’re almost-but-not-quite healed from a wrist injury.

Fingerless gloves, also known as grappling or MMA gloves, offer more knuckle protection than wraps while also supporting the wrist. They are good for striking focus mitts or other hand held pads, but don’t offer enough shock absorption for going all out on the heavy bags. Compared to wraps, they offer less wiggle room for your fingers but are much quicker to apply to and remove from the hand.

Classic boxing gloves offer the highest level of protection for the hands. They’re my favorite choice for punching anything. When you’re going for timed rounds, switching pads with your partner every other round, they’re a fast option for making the switch, as you don’t have to drive 10 fingers into their own little finger hole, as with MMA gloves. If you’re just starting your training and working to get into shape, you might start with 12 ounce gloves and work your way up to traditional 16 ounce gloves. Either way it’s quickly going to feel as if you’re holding a brick in each hand. With boxing gloves, the higher the weight, the thicker the padding.

I eventually came to own all the types of hand protection listed, and you may wish to do the same. However, if you’re just beginning, consider which one will best suit your needs and start with that. If you need anything else it will become apparent during your training. Don’t hesitate to ask your instructors which equipment they prefer. We love to talk about this stuff & will yak your ear off about it.

Protect Ya Back

2011-05-26T09:44:00.008-05:00

Sometimes a little change can make you or break you.

We go hard in Krav and ouchies like big bruises and sore muscles are just the cost of doing business if you want to train. As one of my early trainers told me when I was whining about being sore:

***Everybody has aches and pains. You can have the aches and pains of an athlete or the aches and pains of an overweight couch potato. Pick one.***

However, there's a difference between an ouchie and an injury. An injury to the shoulder or knee (I'm icing my knee as I write this) can significantly inhibit your training. A back injury can take you out of the game permanently.

So it's extremely important not only to train smart and know when to attack and when to ease off, but also to protect your spine by strengthening your core. It may not be fun to do core exercises, but you only get one spine. You're never going to get another one.

Does it sound like I'm lecturing you? Yeah, I kinda am.

Here's a video of some core exercises suggested by Stuart McGill, world renowned Professor of Spine Biomechanics at the University of Waterloo in Canada. McGill is the guy professional sports teams, governments, and rich dudes fly from all over the world to be treated by.

You will find that he dislikes crunches, and we do loads of those, don't we? So does every other gym I've ever stepped foot in, so take his advice and make it work for you. (Spoiler alert - here's your little change.) When you do sit ups or crunches, raise up from the chest & maintain a neutral spine and neck. Imagine there's a string attached to the ceiling and to your sternum and it's drawing your sternum straight up. It's hard, which is awesome, and saves your back.

click here for the video

No Spoon Feeding

2011-05-07T16:56:00.002-05:00

I was talking to my friend Heather the other day, about teaching and how to do it right. Heather is a behavioral specialist, specializing in Special Education, for a few Central Texas school districts. Did you like how I worked "special" 3 times into one sentence? I do. I worked with her at Austin ISD for several years and after watching her consistently be the smartest and most competent person on the planet, I pretty much take anything she says as gospel.

She taught me that one of the reason students come out of school with no problem-solving skills is that all the necessary pieces of information to solve a problem are handed to them. Consequently, they don't know how to puzzle out for themselves what they really need and don't need to reach a desired conclusion.

So I thought about how that might apply to teaching Krav Maga. We do generally (not always) say "here's how you handle this particular problem. Practice this technique." Which is great - up to a point.

So in today's Women-Only class I decided to make them figure it out for themselves. We sat down & I asked, "What if you know you're in some danger but the fight isn't on? What can you do to head things off before they even begin? And what are the probable consequences of those actions?" They sat and waited for the answer - but nope!. They were giving the answers today. Here are the excellent answers they gave:

*walk/drive to a crowded area (yes, we want witnesses!)

*ask for help from someone who works there (assuming that applies)

*pull out your cell phone (I love this, as you can take a picture of them - an act which has solved some crimes - or you can show you are prepared to take action without escalating the situation.)

*maintain strong eye contact

*run

*use social engagement, or try to talk your way out of it

*maintain distance

*call 911

*loudly order them to leave you alone (if they refuse, you just learned a lot about their intentions)

*make a scene (if in public)

*yell or scream

These last 3 are actually some of the most difficult for many people to perform. The social pressures to NOT yell, make a scene, etc. in a public place are very, very strong. Each of these actions can have different consequences. When you consider which of these options you are most likely to choose, you must consider several things:

*Are you accustomed to drawing boundaries in your normal life? That will influence how strongly you are able to tell them to leave you alone. That will influence their reaction.

*If you yell or make a scene be prepared for people to back away from you. Consider saying things like, "I don't know you, stop touching me, I don't know you, you're scaring me, etc." You will have witnesses that the other person was the aggressor. That may not translate into help in the moment, but if they don't believe its a family or couple's squabble your chances of getting help improve.

*If you prefer to run, are you fast? Will you be hindered by a child, an elderly person, even your shoes? What if they catch you? I'm not saying you shouldn't run (I have run away from a dangerous situation!), just that you need to put some real thought into your choice.

Later we moved to the hallway leading the the garage and worked on drawing boundaries, then palm heels, elbows, and knees. Then defending our friend against another attacker, which was nice.

The last exercise was walking the gauntlet. Each pair of partners had to quickly discuss what they were best at, of the techniques we had worked on in class (drawing boundaries verbally, combatives, running to a pre-determined safety zone). They also had to decide how they would attack the pair who were walking the gauntlet. Would they just taunt them? Would both attack one person of the pair? Two on two? The goal was to make a decision in the moment how you were being attacked about how to defend and escape. Do you defend as a team? Does one defend and one go for help?

Frankly, I also had a secret goal. By having the students decide how to attack different people they are forced to look at the defenders perceived weaknesses. I want them to look at someone and decide how to attack them without getting hurt themselves. I want them to think like predators, just for that moment. If they understand how to be a predator, I hope they understand better how to defend themselves from one.

A final note: During the drill one woman panicked and ran, leaving her partner to defend herself alone. She felt terrible about abandoning her partner, and now I wish I hadn't teased her about it. Of course I didn't realize at the time she was upset. But here's the thing: she got away. She's a survivor. I like survivors. She'd said earlier she thought she'd be likely to run when faced with danger, and she did. Her partner successfully fought her way through, so it was fine. I doubt that young woman would have fled on her own if she'd been with a loved one, but she was with a stranger, so she split. Works for me.

Please know that your first job is to survive. Please know that violence in real life is nothing like it is in the movies. If you panic, your body is going to take over and do what it needs to do to survive. That's its job.

Thanks to Kelli for her general awesomeness in class today, and to everyone who came!

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Woof?

2011-04-19T20:55:00.004-05:00

There is a technique called woofing that involves extreme domination of another individual, either verbally or physically or both. I first learned it from Rory Miller when he came to Austin to teach a seminar.

A common example of woofing is to completely immobilize the person & whisper something in their ear like, “The rest of the class thinks this is just an exercise, but I’m about to make you bleed. There’s nothing you can do to stop me, and no one will help you, they’ll just stand there and watch because they don’t know it’s real...”

The goal might be one of a few things. It might be to incite someone to fight at a higher than normal level of intensity because their adrenaline level skyrockets. Or maybe it’s to see how the person will react. Will they struggle, freeze, cry, give up?

It’s a dangerous game, because to work it must be very convincing and frightening - but it’s also the kind of behavior that can destroy relationships.

Twice this month I’ve been called upon to woof students as the first step of a long drill in which we were trying to get untrained female students to overcome their social conditioning and “unleash the beast”. Both were large groups of women I mostly had never met before.

The first time I was too soft on them and was just being generally annoying, like an older sister teasing her younger siblings. I was told to stop being so nice and do it right. To be effective I had to act like a real predator, saying things like, “I’ve been watching you for weeks, and now that I’ve got you tied up I’m going to fuck you in the ass so hard...” So I said that to the next student up, and it worked, but she never looked me in the face again for the rest of the day, which rattled me.

The next time we did the drill was a couple of weeks later, and I took a different approach. I knew a couple of students were from SafePlace, a battered women’s shelter, but I didn’t know who they were. I wasn’t willing to take a chance on re-traumatizing someone who has actually been assaulted, but I had to get their adrenaline levels up fast or we were just wasting their time. So I grabbed each one by the face, like palming a basketball, shoving her back & pinning her hard against the wall by her face & head. With the other hand I pulled out her ponytail or braid & messed her hair up while saying cruel things.

If they were carrying a few extra pounds I called them a fat-ass.

If they were petite I told them they were weak and pathetic.

If I knew they had children I told them the kid was ugly and stupid and would always make bad grades and be a loser.

I told pretty much everyone they sucked.

It was fascinating to watch their behavior. Some tried to immediately fight, others started breathing heavily, but did not try to fight (they were instructed not to fight me). Others endured calmly, calculating, waiting, plotting ...

After about 10 or 15 seconds I’d release them, yelling “GO!!” and giving them a shove toward their first target.

It was also fascinating, to me, to observe my own feelings about what I was doing. Saying cruel things to people was stressing me out so much my stomach was in knots for hours afterward. But physically dominating them was actually kind of fun. Maybe there’s hope for me in sparring, after all.

Some women chose not to participate, and that’s fine, too. I like that they drew a boundary and stuck with it.

The last two women to go through the drill were friends of mine, which changed things considerably for me. It’s one thing to jack up the adrenaline levels of a stranger when I know it will help her in the end. It’s a whole other ballgame to poke at people you personally care about. But it’s also unfair to them to give them a half-assed version of the drill. So, I told one of them I was having an affair with her husband & told the other her son was stupid & I never liked him. When I released that one, she yelled, “Get the fuck out of my way!!”

Incidentally, it’s hard to woof the woofer, so when it was my turn to go, the first time we did the drill, my instructor, Kelly Campbell, was my woofer. I just shook my head & grinned, so she let me go then suddenly attacked me from behind. She is STRONG! I wasn’t grinning then! I struggled, unwilling to strike her. I wormed and wiggled as hard as I could until she let me go so I could complete the drill. Yes, my adrenaline level was UP!

I want to thank everyone who participated in the ladies seminars in April, especially Kelly and Linda Lyra. Woofing is hard to do (the talking part is, anyway) and hard to endure, but it serves a very important function. I hope the females reading this will come to my monthly ladies-only class at Fit and Fearless in Austin. Held the first Saturday of every month at 11:30, it’s free to any female, so come train and I will only say nice things to you.

A Face In The Crowd

2011-03-03T10:52:00.003-06:00

You remember the news reports last year when the Wal-Mart employee was crushed to death by the crowd stampeding into the store to get to the sale items first? Last week a student gave me an article from the New Yorker called Crush Point, by John Seabrook, detailing this and other similar incidents.

I've never been particularly comfortable in crowds, and have been known to get panicky & flee when a crowd is all moving, herd-like in a particular direction. Turns out it wasn't such a bad idea. Large crowds, such as those at sporting events and music festivals can turn deadly when the circumstances are right. You can access the article by clicking here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/07/110207fa_fact_seabrook

or read info from a noted crowd authority here: http://www.crowdsafe.com/

so I won't talk about working your way out of a dangerous crowd in this post, as you'll learn more from those sources.

But I will say this. Your first line of defense in a crowd is the same as it is any where else. Pay attention to what is going on around you. You can feel when a crowd is starting to amp up, to move, to pack together more closely. You don't need to walk around paranoid, but be aware in the general sense of peoples' body language, both the people close to you, and those farther out. If something doesn't "feel right", leave the area. Just leave. The best defense is your absence.

Quick story: Some years ago my husband Jackie & I were shopping at Academy. We'd gone to the different areas of the store where we both wanted to shop, but happened to be within sight of each other. The store's loudspeaker came on and we heard, "Academy shoppers, this is the store manager, we have an emergency and must close the store immediately. Please evacuate the store immediately." Jackie & I took one look at each other, dropped the items we were holding onto the shelves & calmly but very quickly walked toward each other & the hell out of the store. Not a word passed between us. We watched everyone around us, scanning for danger, both as we left the store, and out into the parking lot.

Later, discussing it, we agreed that maybe 10 percent of the shoppers that day reacted as we did. Most people either blew it off entirely or mosied out slowly. One stupid woman (yeah, I said it) sat just outside the store doors with her infant on her lap to see what was going on. Hmm, let's see, Academy sells guns so it could have been a shooter, maybe an environmental hazard, it could have been a freaking suicide bomber. I doubt the store suddenly stopped accepting everyone's money because it was time for their favorite soap opera.

We never did find out the reason, by the way. I don't care. I like knowing that my husband has the instincts of a survivor.

If you sense, or have any reason to believe that something is about to go down, please go away. If this is a subject that interests you, as it does me, those links are a good place to start. To read the whole New Yorker article you have to be a subscriber, but any library will have a copy.

Golden Gloves Tomorrow Night

2011-02-17T15:35:00.005-06:00

How often do you & your friend/significant other/mom look at each other & say:

"What do you wanna do?"

"I dunno. What do you wanna do?"

"I dunno."

Tomorrow night is the final night of the 2011 Golden Gloves competition for Travis County. Tickets are only $10!

Everyone says MMA is so brutal blah blah, because once your opponent is down you jump on him & try to pound him into submission or break one of his limbs. The thing is, boxing has always scared me way more. In MMA there are loads of ways to win or lose - choke out, tap out, knock out, or just be outmatched.

In boxing someone is hitting you in the head, hard, over and over and over. I think that's scary.

Needless to say, I'm gonna go watch some boxing tomorrow night. If you'd like to come, too, click here for more information.

http://www.co.travis.tx.us/sheriff/press_releases/golden_gloves_tournament.asp

Boxers are brave and they are incredible athletes, and boxing has been a way out of poverty for young men as long as the sport has existed. Come support these local fighters and do something different this weekend. I guarantee you'll have stories to tell at work next Monday. I hope to see you there!

The Doctor Is Not In The House

2011-02-11T08:34:00.003-06:00

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, so I'm not telling you what to do, I'm telling you what I do. Use your own brain regarding your own body.

My forward fall breaks & side fall breaks are decent. My back fall breaks, not so much. We'll have to do high fall breaks at my next Phase, so at a couple of workouts every week, where I have access to a crash pad, I practice them. The goal is to help me get over the fear of falling backward through the air as much as practicing the technique.

So the other day when I was flinging myself to the ground repeatedly like some sort of confused schoolyard bully trying to steal my own lunch money, I managed to whack the back of my head on the pad quite nicely. Not too bad, no little flash of light, but a couple of hours later my neck stiffened up & didn't want to swivel my head around the way it's supposed to. No real injury, just an inconvenient boo-boo.

That night in GB's class we practiced slow sparring & Matt kept grabbing me by my headgear & slinging me backward & forward to headbutt me. I was gritting my teeth because he's already being so careful not to bust open my gut where I had the surgery, so I figured I should just suck it up. However by the end of the class someone yelled, "Stop slinging me around by my damn head, my neck is killing me!". The voice sounded suspiciously like mine - my mouth betrayed me once again. As I listened to his brief by heartfelt lecture about how it's my responsibility to tell my partner these things (shut up, please) I wiggled my head & shoulders around, & guess what? His cruel massage fixed me. My neck felt totally fine.

We get lots of inconvenient boo-boos in Krav. The question is, when do you train through it & when do you stay home & watch Family Guy? For me, the general rule is if its stiffness and soreness from training, more training will make it go away. Go to class. If it's a limb that's out of commission, I have other limbs. Make accommodations for the the injury by protecting it, not using it, etc. Go to class. If there is a risk of making an injury worse so that it will remove me from training completely for a week or more, or if my doctor says, "wake up!" then I'm watching class only, or watching Family Guy.

It can be difficult sometimes to be objective about our own lives and our own bodies, so the goal is to take one's ego out of it. Training when our situation is less than perfect teaches us to endure and to persevere. We can do much more than we think we can, just be smart and don't make a moderately bad situation worse.

Mateo Says So

2011-02-03T15:44:00.003-06:00

My sweet friend Matt is amazing. Seriously.

That's him in the pic with me on the top right corner of your screen. I've often wondered if he knows he makes it all look so easy, and I'm happy to find he does know that. He wrote this blog post recently for Fit and Fearless' website, and he's been gracious enough to let me borrow it for y'all to enjoy. Every word he says is true.

How To Be Amazing

Have you always been athletically gifted? Are you one of those people to whom martial arts flow from your limbs as if you were born to strike? Well if you are NOT one of those people, you are like me. I know that a lot of times when I teach class, especially Combatives Conditioning, I may make things look simple, rather, easy. I know that sometimes if you take class with me, it may seem that I struggle much less than others or perhaps not at all. Trust me, this has not always been so. Everything that I have attained thus far is a product of hard training, commitment, and repetition, repetition, repetition. Did I mention repetition yet? Good.

For the purposes of this blog, for this post, we are going to FOCUS on KRAV MAGA only, although this can be applied to almost any aspect in life.

I work like crazy at the things that I care about and appreciate. If I am not good at something, I will work at it until I am good at it. If there is an exercise I hate - I do it until I love it. I do it until I am good enough at it that only a malicious exercise combination or very ambitious amount of reps will make me weary of it. It becomes some form of obsession. Let me tell you that when I first started Krav Maga around 4 years ago I practiced EVERYWHERE. While I was in the car I would practice where my hands would be in a fighting stance and at the lights I would practice inside defenses dry. I would punch and focus on body rotation and form in the shower (slowly of course). If I ever did any ab workout or was just lying on the ground watching TV I would ALWAYS get up "the Krav Way". I would turn corners in the house with elbows, hammerfists, whatever I could think of! ... What is the point in all of this? The point is this - although I might make it look easy, which sometimes it might be for me now (depending on technique), it has only become so because I put in the work and continue (keyword: CONTINUE) to do so.

We have just concluded the New Years Resolution month - that means, it's time to separate the "Talkers" and the "Doers". Those that talk of big change, of moving forward, and of perfecting a technique or skill-set AND...those that ACTUALLY DO IT. Be the one that DOES it. There doesn't have to be any losers either. If you are reading this post there is no reason you can't be a "Do-er"

So a student comes in, he wants to learn Krav Maga. He starts training and then gets distracted, he does a technique a few times and wants to do something else. He does a gun disarm five, six, times and says, "I got the basic idea." No my friends, this is not the way, this is not the way of the warrior, this is not the way MY instructors trained - this is not the way I train - this willnot be the way you train.

Commit to your training - do whatever is necessary to be the best for yourself, for your family. Use wraps and gloves, take cardio class to gain some endurance, take conditioning classes, get some private lessons, use the Level 1 classes to PERFECT the techniques you "already know" - if you are a level 2+ student please do not get caught in the mental trap of being "too skilled" for Level 1 classes either! Commit to yourself - commit to your training and do whatever is necessary to achieve your goals!

I was focused on what I needed to do, nothing else mattered. It is simply a mindset. You go for it, you don't stop and look to the side of the road; you just keep driving. It all starts in your head.

Do today what others won't and tomorrow you will do things others can't!

Here, bite this bullet...

2011-01-25T20:39:00.005-06:00

Sometimes the stuff we do in Krav is painful so I don't want to do it. During an exercise I might find myself backing away when instead I should be driving forward. I see this all the time in others, as well, so I will share a little trick I was taught by my friend and former Chayon-ryu instructor Glenn G.

So says Glenn:

Pain is usually your body telling you that something's wrong, so it's natural to try to avoid it or be frightened by it. When an exercise hurts, first decide if you're in any real danger. If you're not, tell yourself, "It's only pain. I'm not in any danger, I'm not going to die, and the pain will go away. It's temporary, and it's only pain."

At first I thought he was messing with me. Then I was annoyed with him for giving me terrible advice.

But sure enough, the next time I found myself in that situation I told myself, "It's only pain..." and it worked! I stopped being afraid of it, gritted my teeth & just accepted that it was part of the deal. I accepted what it was and what it wasn't, and it became a lot easier to live with.

Why not give it a shot?

Austin's Murder Rate Hits 13 Year High

2011-01-19T20:32:00.015-06:00

But that's not the real news. The real news, for Kravists, is that of the 37 people murdered in 2010, 22 were killed by someone they knew. 11 people were murdered by a person with whom they were intimate (roommate, family member, etc.) In fact, the sharp rise in the murder rate is primarily due to increased domestic violence.

We often train with the sudden attack from a stranger in mind - the faceless, nameless "bad guy". But the reality is, most attacks come from someone we know.

Nobody wants to think about this, because it's extremely disturbing, but the numbers don't lie. Assuming you survive, the psychological damage caused by being assaulted by someone you know - maybe even someone you love - can be devastating.

Most often, there are warning signs that a person in our lives is a potential attacker, but we ignore them, because the thought is too painful to entertain. Nevertheless, if your partner, friend or co-worker exhibits some of the following traits you have reason to be concerned:

**If you feel you are or might be in danger - trust your gut! This might seem obvious, but many people have come to regret telling themselves, "I'm just being silly..."

**The person has used violence to control others in the past - especially if they blame the victim because "they deserved it".

**The person has used violence against animals.

**The person has a fascination with weapons, especially their use as a source of power.

**The person insists on knowing where you are at all times.

**The person destroys material things - particularly objects owned by the subject of their anger or defaces photographs of the person they're angry at.

This is just a brief list, the first ones that come to mind when I think back to the book Gift of Fear. I will say one thing: if a person has used violence against others in the past, but you think they'd never do that to you... I'm about to say something offensive: You're not special. A person who uses or has used violence to control or punish others feels justified in doing so, regardless of who they are hurting.

If you'd like to read the Statesman article, click here:

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/austin-homicides-up-in-2010-especially-those-linked-1188445.html

Struggling vs. Fighting

2011-01-13T11:45:00.009-06:00

When a person has been assaulted, they often say about the incident, “I tried to fight”, and indeed they did try. But often they were not fighting, they were struggling. There is a great difference, and that difference is primarily mental. Sadly, it is often also the difference between victory and defeat - in a situation where victory means only survival and defeat means death, rape, or permanent injury, the stakes are very high.

To struggle is to resist. To struggle is to actively respond to the actions of the attacker - but you are only responding. We can see this most readily in class in bear hugs from behind with the arms caught. The defender bases out, wiggles fiercely, grunts, exhausts himself and wonders why the technique “doesn’t work”. His frustration mounts.

What must change is the defender’s mental attitude. He must go from “The attack is on, I must respond and defend myself” to “HOW DARE YOU TOUCH ME I WILL DESTROY YOU”. For many new students this mental switch can be a tremendous challenge.

To fight is to attack. We do not respond to the actions of the attacker, we make him respond to ours. We strike relentlessly until the threat is neutralized, which means not only that they are no longer attacking, but that they are no longer willing to and/or capable of attack. This could be something as simple as delivering a quick groin strike and running away, if there is a safe place to run to. It could also mean something more.

We can see this again in bear hug from behind with the arms caught: the fighting student bases and spaces aggressively and starts shooting elbows back and fists forward like an enraged beast, stomping and kicking back with his feet as much as maintaining his base will allow, and as soon as the arms around him have loosened, he whirls around and furiously attacks the attacker.

This is the nature of self defense: taking control of the situation and keeping that control. As I say in class, it’s not over ‘til I say its over.

How can you start to train yourself mentally to move from one who struggles to one who fights against an attacker? Try these tactics:

Learn to set boundaries in your daily life. Practicing saying “no” and sticking to it, without excuses or apologies, will give you more confidence on the mat. Become accustomed to standing your ground in small matters, and the big ones will be conquered more easily.

2. In class, choose a partner who likes to go just a little bit harder than you do. Just a little bit. This will give you a higher standard to strive for, and give you the freedom to strike a little harder than you’re accustomed to.

3. If necessary, tell your partner that you have a hard time hitting aggressively and you’re trying to overcome that roadblock. Most people want to be helpful, and will happily encourage you and guide you.

4. If you still find yourself holding back, find someone much larger than you to hold the pad for combatives or attack you during self defense. Then hit!

5. Learn to objectively assess a situation for the level of danger it presents. This will be the subject of another blog entry, but until then I strongly recommend you read the book The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker.

Understand that being aggressive with your combatives doesn't mean you will become an aggressive or offensive person off the mat, unless you make the choice to do so. Working on expanding the limits of your capabilities in class, however, will affect the rest of your life in a very positive way. Learn when to exhibit control and when to go all out, and you will be surprised at what you can accomplish!

I Got In Trouble With My Mom

2009-08-13T00:05:00.003-05:00

I am reprimanded for 2 things regarding this blog:

1 - I swear too much, including blasphemy.
2 - I denigrate my own accomplishments too much & don't give myself enough credit.

My official response:

1 - I do swear quite a bit, don't I? I love a good swear word. Take the "F" word, for example. Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside just like a quesadilla. It's a hardworking word, too, being a verb, a noun, and an adjective. I think its quite beautiful.

Regarding blasphemy and other swear words, I told her the following.

"Mom," I said, "God likes me and I like God. We have a good relationship. And He says that He's noticed I don't rape & murder people, or molest children, or set dogs on fire, so He told me He's going to let this one slide."

2 - It's also true that I write a lot about my shortcomings in Krav. This is because I generally tend to think of what I want to improve instead of ruminating on how well I keep my back heel up in fighting stance. In the interest of parity, and because I love my mom & want her to be happy, here is a list of Krav things I do well:

*I am a hard worker. I continued to come to class the entire two months my injured shoulder left me incapacitated, and I still rarely miss a session.
*I do not quit easily. Twice I've had to leave class to vomit, and both times I've immediately staggered back into the room to finish training.
*I care about my students and want them to succeed, and will jump through any number of hoops to help bring this about.
*I am very teachable. If my instructor tells me to fix something, I always try do so as quickly as possible, preferably immediately.
*I am a good teacher. I really believe that, and it makes me incredibly happy.
*I work on my weak points as soon as I recognize a problem, and do not stop working on them until they are better. Right now my weakest skill is sparring, so instead of practicing my front kick, which is already strong, I'm doing a lot of sparring. It's kind of embarrassing, but that's the door I have to walk through to get to where I want to be.
*I'm outperforming some people half my age. Bwahahahaha!
*I'm not as good as I want to be, but I'm a whole lot better than I was. I earned this.
*I smell like roses. This is a verifiable fact.

Ta dah!

It's Good for My Character, I Suppose

2009-08-11T10:08:00.002-05:00

I need to be stronger, so Big Daddy J has told me to stop worrying about coming in first in CrossFit & pick the heaviest weight I can manage. I'm to do everything with heavy weights, with perfect form, as slowly as it takes to complete the workout. Yesterday I got cut off, I didn't even complete all the rounds. I didn't used to be competitive about this stuff, but now that I've become so, it's difficult to let others pass me by! Yeah, yeah, I know in my brain that this is exactly what I need to do to improve, I'm just saying I'm immature enough that I'm having to force myself to do what's correct instead of what's easy.

My plan is this: I turn 44 on October 19, so I will do this 'slow & heavy' program until then, and then I will pick up the speed again. I think 2 months is enough time to become stronger & better. Anyway, I need a goal to shoot for or I'll peter out.

And as far as grinding my teeth about seeing everyone "beat" me, I keep reminding myself of a great quote I read on t-nation yesterday: "Everything you want is just outside your comfort zone."

I love that, and believe its true. I also believe that the reason most people become fat/lazy/numb is that we as a species tend to seek comfort over capacity, as Mark Twight puts it. I used to do that, too, and felt myself slipping back toward that habit recently. I'm having to refocus my objectives: take off the 10 pounds of fat I've earned by gobbling up every carb I can find lately, & commit to a new workout schedule that accommodates the teaching time I'm now putting in (which was previously workout time). This heavy & slow CrossFit plan is a step in the right direction.

Yuck

2009-07-30T13:31:00.002-05:00

Just saw video of myself "sparring" the Gentleman this morning. Sweet baby Jesus. I look like a timid little mouse. Poor G is just going about 20% on me, how sad for him! It's extremely clear in the video that I will do just about anything but strike my friend in the face. How depressing. The good news is, this is going to make an excellent "before" video!

2009-07-29T19:25:00.002-05:00

Ladies class went well tonight. Jeff announced we are making the class a permanent part of the schedule - yay! - and everyone was very happy to hear it. Tonight we worked hammers, vertical front kicks (the lazy man's term for the kick), and bear hugs. I am scared of Mighty Mouse. If she ever demands money or food or cute shoes from me, I will hand them over. I notice that when the Gentleman attacks me he does it hard and with abandon, with no thought to his own safety. I'm not like that. I'm too fearful when I attack. Working on it. That and about a million other things.

Also, I'm putting together a packet to be distributed at the ladies self defense seminar coming up in September. I've started creating a reading list of books and blogs for anyone who is interested in learning about that stuff, and downloaded some info off the Austin Police Department's website. Today I was asking questions of a husband and wife who are students at F&F - she's a cop and he's a former EMS worker. I'm creating a list of what people can expect from EMS, cops, and even their own friends in the immediate aftermath of an assault. One fascinating thing the EMS guy told me "her body will be treated like a crime scene". That creeped me out & I asked what he meant. He talked about not destroying evidence, treating any life threatening injuries, but then letting her get to the police as quickly as possible so EMS doesn't accidentally ruin the case. An example he gave was that sexual assault attackers often bite or lick their victims, and if he licks her hand, and the EMS workers go to put an IV in her hand, they'll sterilize it first - destroying any DNA evidence that could have been collected from the saliva. This stuff is fascinating to me. More to come.

Many Rounds of Bang

2009-07-29T07:54:00.002-05:00

Though I've been telling myself for ages to get back to working out properly, I just always seem to be "too busy", which, of course, is bullshit. So last week I took GB's level 3/4 class to get myself jump started, and last night I took it again. I think its working. I partnered with Miss C, my favorite partner, who I haven't worked with in several months, and we did fun stuff I didn't know how to do, so I'm learning again! Then for about the last 10 minutes of class we sparred. Yay! I've started having trouble punching people in the face again, I guess because its been 6 weeks or so since I've done any sparring. After a few rounds I was ok, so clearly I just need to do it as often as possible.

Fortunately the Gentleman asked me to spar after class, so we went at it for about half an hour, then I stepped into the MMA class in room 1. My first class being taught by Tap. More sparring. One hour. Freaking awesome.

Now I ache. There is no part of me that does not ache.

Last night, when I got home, I took a shower & climbed into bed, where I proceeded to dream that I was, you guessed it, sparring. I woke up at 3:18 a.m., cursing myself. Enough with the punching, I need some rest.

Its funny how perception can deviate so very much from reality. Between rounds I had my hands on my hips, pacing around in circles. Big Daddy J beckoned me into the lobby and asked me if I was feeling pretty good. "You must be, the way you're strutting around like a badass." Ha. If I'd had the energy to laugh, I would have. The truth was that my heart rate was up so much from being out of shape that if I stopped moving I got sick to my stomach. I could sit down with my head between my knees, or lay on my back, to achieve the same end, but Relentless had taught me never to do that when I went to Phase, never to show weakness to my instructors. I figured it was good practice to keep that habit up, so I just keep moving, trying to keep the "Dear God, somebody help me" look off my face. Guess it worked!

More sparring with the Gentleman on Thursday. Yay!

Taking a Bite

2009-07-28T08:07:00.002-05:00

Taught level 1 last night in the small room. I don't think I've ever done that before. It was a pretty big class, and we worked palm heel strikes, round kicks, front kicks to a vertical target, and 360's. How I love 360's. Such a natural movement. Mudslide came and sat in on class for a while, so I had him attack me for the demonstration & he was brilliant. Good hard attacks, but very visible.

I've just finished writing an article for the new website called "The Unwritten Rules of the Mat", an idea I stole from watching the Tour de France where they had a similar story about the rules of the peloton.

Looking back on last night's class, I realize how often people just instinctively know the rules of good behavior in class, even though they can sometimes be different than those of the outside world. It's extremely rare for someone to just be an outright ass in training. I refer in the article to an incident when I had to strike back at someone who was being reckless & hurting other students (including me) by running over them when pushing his partner back with his strikes. It was making me mad, but I knew he was pretty new to this, so I tapped him on the shoulder & asked him politely to stop doing that. He said he would, then slammed into us again. I asked him a little more sternly to be careful. I saw him running over other people, stomping their ankles & hurting them. Ooooh, it made me mad. So I positioned myself next to him during the next round, & when he ran over me I body slammed him & stuck my finger in his face & told him he'd better cut the crap right now. He was shocked, and after class came over to me & apologized repeatedly. It turned out he really hadn't meant to harm anyone, he was just being a wild man trying to keep up with his more experienced partner. I felt kind of bad at the time about how mean I'd been to him, but it was only then that he stopped stomping us all to death. I guess sometimes when a growl doesn't work you have to take a little bite.

Faster, Pussycat, Kill, Kill!

2009-07-23T00:42:00.002-05:00

Well, that's a movie that I've never seen, but it just has the best name ever. It's these ladies in our ladies-only class I'm thinking about. They're starting to get a big more aggressive & it's tickling me to no end. Juuuuuuust a little bit, it's poking through. You can see the difference between the women who are there for their first or second class & those who have been doing it a while, and I'm loving that!

Tonight we worked chokes, a source of frustration for me, because they are so shy about their defenses, and real life chokes are just so scary and horrible. I know it takes time to build that aggression up - for me it actually took years, and I'm still not where I want to be. But I was raised on MTV and microwave ovens and I want everything NOW!

So it was so cool when we went out into the creepy hallway, where you can't see around any of the corners, & choked each other. When you get people in a new environment they really loosen up, and we started seeing some real progress! Then, the most fun, each of us, including me, went through a gauntlet of the whole class. Each side of the narrow-ish hallway was lined with potential attackers, and you never knew who - if anyone - it would be. The most nerve-wracking part was standing there with your back to everyone while Mighty Mouse gave out attacker assignments. We are strongly encouraging everyone to use their voices to yell at their attackers & one lady yelled, "Get off me!" and to her very next attacker she yelled, "You, too!" and we all laughed. Its getting more and more fun as we get to know each other.

Oh, Happy, Sweaty, Bruisy Day

2009-07-21T21:30:00.002-05:00

I think I might be starting to suck a bit, because I've not had a proper training schedule for over a month now. Today was my first day back. I'm sore & banged up & have a huge mouse on my right shin, which is the one that's already trashed. Nice. I don't seem to care. Though I did care when I was icing it a few minutes ago, but whatcha' gonna do?

I rushed into the Gorgeous Bastard's level 3/4 class from a meeting that I still didn't stay til the end of. His classes are always so creative and challenging, I just know I'm going to have a wealth of ideas to steal. Tonight we did this cool thing where we shoved our attacker, who was standing too close & in front of us, then as they flew backward we stepped in with a front kick to a vertical target, which pushed them back further. Then we didn't "advance" open/close style, we stepped in & threw a hard right cross to a focus mitt. The next round we continued to advance with more right crosses, ending with stomps to the kick shield, which the "attacker" dropped. It was really challenging to get the right distance in movement - I found myself often moving too close in, or not close in enough to get a strong punch.

The next thing was even better. One person stood, alone, clad in full pads & mouth piece, and boxing gloves, at the end of the room near the door. (No head gear) Another person stood at the opposite end of the room. They were facing each other. In between, the entire rest of the class, all in full pads also, stood between them, holding kick shields, standing & holding the pads in a herring bone pattern, facing the first person at the end of the room. On GB's "go", person A fights through the padholders, who try to prevent his passage. Once they have finally made it through, they quickly grab the lone person at the back of the room & get them in 3rd party protection position, then rush for the door. Every other student in the room has by this point thrown their kick shield aside, & proceeds to attack person A with punches, kicks, whatever. The Emasculator must have kicked me in the ribs 3 times. Actually it was 3 times. I counted.
I am extremely excited to be doing this again.

Next hour I - well, for a while I ran my mouth in the lobby. Then I talked Copperhead into taking bag class with me. It was brutal. I told Relentless when he corrected my form to SHUUUUT UUUUUUUUUP! He was right though. Dammit.

Then about 20 minutes of MMA with the Professor. Pooped.

Splattered

2009-07-21T09:03:00.002-05:00

I'm constantly trying to come up with new ways to make the ladies class more interesting, so much so that Mighty Mouse is having to rein me in a bit. She's right, too, sometimes I want to do fun stuff before they're really ready for it. But last night we did something fun.

Everyone hates practicing eye gouges, because no matter how softly you do it to a pad, it hurts. I guess if you reeeeally do it softly enough, it won't hurt, but you also will get zero benefit. So I read on an online forum that grapefruit halves make a nice substitute for the human eye. They're gooey and fleshy, and when you cut it in half cross-ways, that little triangle of flesh makes a decent approximation of the size of an eye. Hee hee!

So we went outside with a big bag of grapefruits and a big knife & started going nuts with eye jabs. Man, we were covered in citrus bits and juice! I totally underestimated the juiciness of these fruits. It was cool. We had them set up in two lines & each lady got a fresh grapefruit half to start on. A couple of people went so crazy with it they totally ripped their fruits in half with their jabs! I don't know, in the end, how realistic the fruits were, but it was useful because it made them contemplate the reality of what we're training for, for just a few seconds. Everyone, even me, hesitated for just a second before ramming our fingers into that wet mess, but watching them make the decision to just go for it is pretty much what I live for.

Great Article

2009-07-19T14:36:00.002-05:00

At krav we're always harping on about the fact that the way you train is the way you'll fight. That's because when your body experiences an adrenaline surge & your life is in danger, your brain & fine motor skills degrade, and your body automatically does what its been taught to do. So if you practice throwing weak knees to your partner, then drop your hands & stand there saying, "okay, your turn", that's what you'll do when the heat is on. Yes, its really true.

And here's a link to an article called Combat Psychology and Sports Performance that explains exactly why. You're welcome!

http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/combat_psychology_and_sports_performance

I'm Having Fun!

2009-07-16T20:28:00.003-05:00

Okay, I'm having fun teaching. Can't quite seem to get enough of it & when I see my students progress it is SO exciting. Usually the men catch on quite quickly, often, I believe, because they had more athletic experience when they were younger. Even with Title 9, its less common for female children to be serious athletes than it is for males. And then there's that whole testosterone thing going on with the guys - often a definite advantage.

So in spite of my unexpected extreme enthusiasm for training women, which I'll get into another time, I'm fascinated by the occasional male adult student I get who seems to have never, ever done anything athletic before. They are often shy & just don't really seem to trust their body, know how to use it, or believe that its powerful. This is a common problem for females, but much rarer for males, so when I get one, I watch them like a hawk, because I want that payoff. I want to be there when the switch flips and the shy guy gets that look in his eyes & finally makes a real fist & just NAILS the pad, forcing the padholders body back for the very first time.

It happened recently, and I got to see it! It is so exciting, because you just know that newfound confidence is eventually going to bleed over into every area of his life. God, I love being a part of that process!

So, yeah, this is definitely my idea of a good time.

Sweatfest

2009-07-07T20:59:00.002-05:00

Watched Big Daddy J train a new girl in CrossFit today, wondering if that might be where I'm going.....having lunch with him tomorrow to talk. Refuse to speculate. You can't make me.

Walked back to the main studio & took The Gentleman's bag class, like an idiot. My abs are still screaming from Stronggirl's CrossFit Festival of Torment yesterday, but some people never learn. I'd like to learn to teach bag sometime, I really like that class. Glad I'm back to working out properly, maybe now I'll actually make it through a whole class. Eventually. Then I went to Mighty Fine Burgers! I sure did! Bwahahahaha!

The Girl's Club

2009-07-06T20:07:00.002-05:00

Enough if this non-posting nonsense! And today I have something special to write about. Mighty Mouse & I taught the first in the July series of classes for women only. It was fun! By the time it was over everyone seemed exhilarated & ready to come back. We did lose one - one lady having her first class pooped out during the warmup & almost fainted. She had to leave. Its unfortunate, because it wasn't a difficult warmup by krav standards, though let's face it, back when I was taking my first class there's no way I could have done it. People need to learn to pace themselves. Another lady found the warmup to be too much for her so she just walked around the room until she got her heart rate & breath back to where she was able to participate again. I guess sometimes the way we learn our limits is to exceed them, though. Kind of like with tequila.

We went over the basics tonight, as we had a couple of very new ladies - palm heels, front kicks to the groin, & knees, ending with the drill where you mount the kick shield & pound the crap out of it. Next Wednesday we'll build on it with straight punches & add chokes - probably 2 handed pluck, its the easiest. Also, next week we'll start adding in training in street clothes, which I'm very keen on. It was an idea I'd been toying with in my mind, but the Machine requested it & seemed to feel quite strongly about it, so I'd like to do it every Wednesday if Mighty Mouse will agree. Actually, after the first time we do it we should ask the students how they feel about it, and be guided by that.

I'm very excited about this class, the women are very open to whatever we want to do & they say they feel more comfortable training without the men around, so they can let loose more. I am very surprised to find myself feeling so strongly about the success of this series of classes. With my normal preference for male training partners, friends, and companions my very ardent desire to see these (and all) women grow in confidence and ass-kicking ability was the last thing I expected. But when I see how exuberant they are after class it just makes me greedy for more.

Hey! My husband just came in the with the mail & my new focus mitts are in! I fell in love with the Title Micro Mitts, so I ordered some. Maybe tomorrow I'll smack the Gentleman with them in our sparring session. To paraphrase Bam Bam, "I got some mitts, look out!"

2009-06-26T08:13:00.002-05:00

Trained in the parking garage last night because the class was so big we couldn't all fit in room 1. I think I counted 36 people. It was hot, noisy, and the floor was slippery. It was a nice change, actually, and I'd like to utilize the garage using attacks that might actually happen there. So...say the defender is walking along minding his own business & the attacker darts out from behind a car to put the choke on, something like that. That wouldn't have worked last night, though, way too many people for us to keep an eye on everyone when they're as spread out as they'd have to be to pull that off.

I think I might be toughening up a little. While holding a kick shield for the Gentleman to demonstrate front kicks, I held it too close to my body & ended up getting kicked in the solar plexus. From his fighting stance, he quickly froze & asked if I could keep going & I insisted that I could, so he continued. In the past I would have crunched up like I'd been shot with a bow & arrow, but I can keep going now. Of course, I had to bring it up 50 times later on, to torment him, but that's what friends are for. The Gentleman goes hard with me, he doesn't baby me, & I love that.

Last night we had a girl come in for her first lesson, she's the friend of a new student & he brought her in to try it out. She didn't last 10 minutes! I saw her sitting on one of the little concrete things that prevent your car from going further forward in a parking space & asked if she was alright. She told me, "This stuff is not for me. Everything can't be for everybody, & I don't like this." Well, in spite of my belief that everyone needs to be capable of basic self defense, I've always respected people who can just say, "NO, I don't care what everyone else in the room is doing, I'm doing what I want." That's very difficult for most people, so good for her.

I'm Back, Baby!

2009-06-23T21:52:00.002-05:00

So glad to be doing something approximating my old schedule! Went back for teacher training, not knowing what to expect now that Phase is over. The Gorgeous Bastard had Bam Bam teach me cardio, as she's learning to teach bag class. Then he had me teach "any level 2 technique" to her - I chose side kick, which I haven't done since I was a fetus. So I had to relearn how to do it, and the funny thing was the easiest part was picking out what the teaching points would be. I liked that.

Next hour I had the choice of attending GB's level 3/4 class or assisting The Gentleman as he taught level 1/2. That was a tough call, as I reeeeally miss GB's classes, but I'm still having so much fun teaching (the shine hasn't wore off it yet, as my aunt would say), and the class was so enormous, that I decided to teach. It was fun! The Gentleman kicked me so hard when I held a kick shield to my abdomen for round kicks that it reverberated up into my throat & made me feel just for an instant like he was going to kick my lunch back up out of me. The class was ginormous. I'm beginning to wonder how long this location will hold us all, the classes are busting at the seams.

Next was yoga, yay! My body is tight as a drum right now, and Dr. J fixed me right up. I can pop into handstands against the wall quite easily now, so you know what that means - time to scoot away from the wall.

Last hour was MMA. Felt like a dork because I learned that a student from level 1 has been letting me call her the wrong name for at least a month. Worked the pads, worked the ground, got my ass handed to me from sidemount yet again. I have never successfully escaped from sidemount. Its a flaw. I prefer punching people in the face to letting them squish me.

I'm in such a good mood now, even though I've been home for a week, now I feel like I'm "back home" and it feels really good.

Good Question

2009-06-23T09:40:00.002-05:00

A friend on Facebook asked me what, knowing what I know now, I would change about my preparation for Phase. And you know what? I have to say I wouldn't change a thing. I would actually say that The Pen & I were probably some of the best prepared people there. That doesn't change the fact that I was sick with fear or that I had a lot of corrections to make once I got there or that it was one of the most difficult weeks I've ever been through. All those things were very much the case. But the people who trained me are very good at what they do, and whether I wanted to or not, I did as I was told, and it paid off.

If you are considering going to Phase A, here are some things you should be doing to ensure your success:

*Memorize your teaching points. I wrote out copies of the points - all of them - on flash cards & used them to study. I probably made a total of 4, maybe 5 sets.

I tried a million different ways to say things, but my instructors always brought me back to the basics. Simpler is better. No one but The Pen & I had been drilled on the points this way, and it made it more difficult for them when it came time to teach.

*Practice teach in front of your instructors - a lot. This is a nightmare. It was my least favorite thing to do. Flopping around like a flounder in front of people who are very good at what you still suck at is no fun, but if you can do it right in front of them, you can do it right in front of anybody.

*Teach real students in a real class. You will do make more stupid mistakes than you ever thought possible. Good for you. Now is the time to do that.

*Teach when you are exhausted, because then your brain is not functioning properly. The Gentleman used to put me through a particularly horrific training session where he would wear me out with a general workout, then make me strike the heavy bag while he continually whacked me & dragged me away from it, forcing me to fight to get back to the bag. Then he'd start non-stop chokes, hard. Then, when I was really having to force myself not to beg him to stop, he'd yell, "Teach choke from the side, NOW!". This single tactic was one of the most useful things I practiced, because in Phase they will wear you out past anything you have ever endured (unless maybe you're in the military), and still expect you to perform. So you might as well get used to it.

*Train with people who have no problem tormenting you and screwing with your head. The Gorgeous Bastard specialized in mentally torturing me (all for my own good, I can assure you), while Relentless & The General loved to tell me to prepare to teach one thing in front of the class, then at the last possible second tell me to teach something totally different RIGHT NOW. All this was enormously helpful to me, as a great portion of getting through Phase is mental. You have to be like the Black Knight in Monty Python's Search For The Holy Grail. When your Phase instructor chops your arm off, you simply say, "It's only a flesh wound!" and keep going. This is easier said than done.

*Learn how to eat, drink, & supplement in the best way to support your body. Then make that a habit well before you leave.

*Train hard and do it consistently. I think I only missed one session in 8 months, when I went out of town. That day was awesome!

*Decide before you go why you're doing this, and you'd better have a damn good reason. It's not fun. It's hard. It's painful. The odds of you being injured are high. Having a meaningful why makes it possible to get through the horrible how.

Some Notes on Phase A

2009-06-11T18:31:00.005-05:00

I usually prefer to write fairly coherently, but I'm not sure I'm capable of that right now. Here are some observations:

*On instructors:

I was really pleased to find out that Pete is not the Demon of Crossroads Boulevard. He has actually been incredibly sweet and supportive. I like him.

Matt Romon was also a pleasure to learn from. There's none of the mind games I was told of, he's just teaching you and helping you to grow. Again, I like him.

There's a muscular & pretty girl here named L----- who is kind of mean. I'm sure she's very nice when you get to know her, but I'm staying away from her for now. She got really snippy with me on the first day & I was just about to get snippy back when I remembered Mami K told me, "They will know just how to get under your skin. Don't let them." So I shut the hell up. Besides, L----- looks like she could kill me with one hand, roll me up in a low-carb tortilla with the other hand & swallow me whole. And let's face it, she did take the time to come over & correct me a couple of times, which I appreciate. But when she looks at me she always appears to want to slap the shit out of me, so I try to stay out of arm's reach. They always say female instructors are hardest on potential female instructors, as a way of toughening them up, so I'm not taking it personally, I'm just staying out of her way.

*People break and then bounce back: On the 2nd or 3rd day (already they are blurring together, today was day 4) we had to do an absorbing drill at the end of the day where you cover your head & absorb constant punches to the gut. My partner was backing up & saying quietly, "I can't, I can't, I can't..." and I was yelling, "Yes, you can!" I was worried about her that night, but the next morning she showed up bright eyed & bushy tailed, ready to go. I like the fact that she punches hard & keeps going, even though her tendonitis is giving her a very hard time. She's also an experienced groundfighter, so she was great to partner with today on the ground. I mean freaking fantastic, also because she's only 5'2" & light as a feather. However, she gets sloppy on her standup sometimes & I've taken many hard hits to the head & ribs, which is making me grind my teeth a bit. She's not doing it on purpose, though, so whatever.

*All those problems I've always had punching my friends in the face, all my little internal struggles with that, are no issue here. I like these people, but they're not my friends & I punch them without hesitation. Hurray!

*Christian is having a bad day. Day 4 is traditionally the Bad Day, & he is suffering, but he has such a great attitude. I'm incredibly lucky to be here with him. Also, he is continuing to perform very well, even though today it was really taking everything he had. He has a black toenail (from an injury yesterday) that will eventually fall off, massive cuts and bruises everywhere, a large cut on the inside of his top lip, and his thigh is completely covered with a giant bruise from absorbing kicks. His partner is training to be a professional MMA fighter & kicks like Wayne, meaning even his soft kicks feel like you've been hit with a bat.
I looked over at him today to see how he was doing & he was going at it with his partner on the focus mitts & Christian had a look on his face like he was a total fucking psychopath. I mean scary! It was awesome.

*Last night I had the Bad Night. The only time we actually get to eat real food is in the evening. You have to have a very light breakfast & maybe just a protein bar and a piece of fruit for lunch or you won't keep it down when the workout starts. Last night I waited too long to eat (filthy lying host at the restaurant!!!! An hour and a half is NOT half an hour!) By the time the food got there it was too late, my blood sugar had crashed too much & I was choking back vomit at the table while I shoved a melted protein bar in my mouth with tears streaming down my face. I wasn't actually "crying" but there was water coming out of my eyes, if that makes sense. I was just SO hungry from the workout. When dinner finally came I shoved as much of the food into my belly as I could then literally staggered out of there & fell asleep the instant my butt hit the car seat. (Jackie was driving, he came to see me & take me out to a special dinner, the sweet thing.) La Fogata can go straight to Hell and take their delicious Mexican food with them.

*Today Big Daddy J came to visit us! It was such a nice surprise, like a ray of sunshine, but I also felt really self conscious at first. (Dork.) He gave me some good advice on what I was doing wrong during an exercise, but now I have no idea what it was, or even what we were doing. Everything is blurring together into a haze of pain and sweat.

*Matt R. & Pete have left us now, and AJ & Todd will begin teaching us tomorrow. I was very sad to see Matt & Pete go, and am a little bit nervous about how AJ & Todd will be, but frankly I'm just too tired to work up much anxiety about that or anything else.

*I look like a refugee, I smell like a barn, and I haven't had a full night's sleep in days. None of us have. I'm dropping weight quickly. And until today I've been doing all this with a cold, which worked out to my advantage, because it lowered my voice & forced me to focus harder because I was trying not to faint. Now I'm off to take a cold shower. Thank you and good night!

Whack!!

2009-06-02T22:04:00.002-05:00

I find I usually respond nicely to a well-timed slap in the face.

Another thing I've noticed about myself is that my emotions rarely are muddled. If I like someone, I adore them. If I don't like them, I'm grinding my teeth and looking for sharp objects the moment they speak. So it wasn't enough for me to just be nervous about going to Phase. I had to freak out. Mission accomplished.

So many people have been so incredibly generous to me, and I had myself convinced that every mistake I made was clear evidence that I was going to let them all down and that they would respond by locking me in the studio and burning it to the ground.

I saw The General in the Box today & he asked me how I was doing. I told him I was a wreck, and told him why. God bless him. He looked at me like he'd just caught me eating a cockroach and said, "That's stupid."

And I felt so much better!

Learning

2009-05-21T11:00:00.005-05:00

Yesterday was a whipping, and it made me so happy. I started the morning with the Gentleman, working the heavy bag, doing tortuous drills forbidden by the Geneva Convention, & teaching when he's got me exhausted. We did this one exercise that was interesting: to help me learn to focus & to not be distracted, he had me hit the heavy bag non-stop while he is 1) striking me continuously, not hard enough to really hurt, but just hurt a little & jar my body enough so that I can't comfortably strike the bag because I have to continually reset my body 2) yelling "sprawl!", & I have to sprawl & come up with a combo #4, then go back immediately to whatever strike I'm assigned, and 3) he bear hugs me & either drags me away from the bag or flings me aside like I'm a rag doll. Yes, he is strong enough to do that. My job is just to ignore him & keep hitting the bag no matter what. After an hour of this I ran home to eat & shower & come right back for round 2:

A session with the Gorgeous Bastard. I show up & he asks, "Hi, how are you?" I answer, "I'm tired, sore, and I don't want to be here or do this. So its perfect, because that's what I was hoping for. Let's do this." He put me against the wall & started punching me, making me fight to get off the wall. After he got tired of being kicked in the balls we went to ground work. Started each round from mount, side mount, & guard. Fight him off. Work buck & roll. He made me punch him in the face & head, which I have a huge problem with, particularly with him. In fact, I believe that the day I can punch GB in the face & not get upset, I can punch anybody. That day is closer, but its evidently not here yet. We didn't work krav "techniques", aside from buck & roll, so much as just go at it. Hard.

I've done a session with the Professor like this as well, and I value these lessons very much, & I intend to do them as often as I can, adding the Gentleman & whoever else I can get to add to the mix. Well, not "whoever", but guys I know well & trust completely, because we're going hard. I find that I learn things I can apply to krav, such as when they clinch me hard & start flinging me around or dragging me someplace, I have found I rarely have the upper body strength to get them off me, and I exhaust myself trying. So now my knee has started to automatically come up for groin kicks, and that seems to be working nicely. Mmmm, I'm not saying that right. I mean to express that the ability to automatically react aggressively & just attack instead of thinking about what I "should" be doing is what's helping me in krav. This quality seems, for me, to be more readily cultivated in these bang-bang-bang sessions, than in sessions that focus more on mastering technique, or even in sparring.

Also, if you plan to do this sort of lesson, its important to think objectively about where you need to grow, & pick the right instructor to address that need. For instance, The Gentleman will attack me very hard & if I mess up he won't stop, he just keeps attacking, yelling, "Fight, Miss Parker, fight!!". I'm sure the other guys are willing to go harder with me, but the Gentleman just does it all the time.

The Professor, as a devotee of BJJ, is more interested in what he calls "flow". He keeps me always moving, teaching me strategy, showing me how to find & exploit openings I never would have found on my own. Also, because he's not a kravver, he moves his body differently, which gives me something new to have to address.

The Gorgeous Bastard uses his size against me (at my request). Even though I trust him completely, when he comes at me I still feel a little flash of fear, a total lizard brain response. So I use all my weapons against him, but he primarily just uses muscle against me, which helps me learn to struggle against an impossibly stronger opponent & face that automatic fear head on & causes me to fight dirty automatically.

What I'm observing in myself is this:

Bad: a tendency to ball up if I'm hurt, an extreme dislike for punching people I care about in the face with the attendant hesitancy to do it, a tendency to back up if I'm scared, a habit of getting myself stuck in triangle chokes, and I squeak & squeal a lot when I'm exerting myself.

Good: a natural inclination to fight dirty, particularly punches & kicks to the groin & a complete willingness to grab a guy's "package" & rip it off his body (even my friends that I can't punch in the face), a strong tendency to bite anything close to my mouth, to scratch/dig the eyes, a natural movement toward headbutting & attacking the throat. I have also found on several occasions that if a guy has me pinned while we're on the ground, if I shove my thumb quickly & very hard up his ass, he freaks out, loosens up, & I get a convenient opening to attack him. I also have found that I do not give up, at least not so far, which has been a huge relief.

Interestingly, I notice that when you're exhausted your body just does things that your brain might not have considered. For instance, when The Gentleman had me on the heavy bag, once when I was very tired he grabbed me & started to drag me away & I quickly wrapped my arms around the bag & held on for dear life. He laughed & went back to punching me. Same with groin kicks/knees instead of trying to simply wriggle out of hard clinches. Your body wants to do what works, if your brain can just shut up long enough to let it go to work.

Busy

2009-05-19T21:11:00.002-05:00

My life is kind of consumed right now with getting ready for Phase.

If I'm just sitting around thinking about it I start to get really scared & ill, but if I work out & practice that goes away. Which is good, because they've got me on a killer schedule. 3 private lessons per week (each one a total freaking beat down) with the Gentleman, 3 bag classes per week, 2 level 1 classes as a student per week. Also, tomorrow after my private with the Gentleman I have a private with the Gorgeous Bastard, to take yet another beating. This in addition to 2 teacher training sessions per week & assisting in 3 level 1 classes. I think I'll be ready, but everyone keeps feeding me stories of how I'm going to wish I had staked myself to an ant hill instead of going through Phase. "But you'll be fine.." They always end with that one. And the sympathetic smile. Oh, jeez.

Today in the noon level 1/2 class (that's "one-two", not "half") I taught choke from the front with a push, and it was not that good. I didn't make the little basket on the dynamic demonstration, though I told everyone else to do it, and on dry work I ran them through it with a series of "go's", instead of numbering their movements & I just confused them.

So the Pen & I worked on that with GB in teacher training & when the Dragon asked what I wanted to teach in class I said, "Choke from the front with a push, I need to redeem myself." And I did! It went perfectly. Whew!

Bad girl!

2009-05-13T16:21:00.005-05:00

The consensus is that I need to get in shape. I used to take 3 level 1 classes a week, but now that I'm working those classes (okay, 2 classes & taking one level 3/4), I've lost 3 hours per week of hard workout time. So now I'm taking 2 level 1 classes per week, plus 2-3 bag classes, plus The Gentleman is training me in a one-one-one bag class 3 times per week. Oh. My. God.

Last night I took Relentless' bag class. I thought I would die. In fact, when I sat on the floor waiting for MMA, my next class, to begin, one of the guys in the class came up to me & said, "You look like death." I couldn't argue. Hell, to argue I'd still have to possess the capacity for speech, & that was a distant memory.

The Professor, bless him, usually holds pads for me in the beginning of MMA, and towards the end, when I told him I thought I couldn't do anymore he said to me, "Keep going, girl, this is where it makes you strong." Curse him. I kept going. I like it when he calls me "girl" or when my husband calls me "woman", and have no explanation for this.

Then I left, and that's when I did the Bad Thing. I haven't done It in several years, and the last time I did It, I promised myself I'd never do It again. Last night they broke me. I did It. I went through the McDonald's drive-thru.

I got a child's hamburger, a small fries, and a medium Sprite. I ate all the meat, about 25% of the bread (BREAD!), and every molecule of french fry I could harvest from that little white bag. I was cramming those fries into my gob 3 and 4 at a time, then digging around like Charlie Brown looking for a Valentine's card in the mailbox. And that glorious ice cold Sprite (SODA! HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP! OMG!) that stung my tongue and throat with its majestic bubbles - oh! I cannot overstate the pleasure I took in that meal and I probably finished it in under 90 seconds. Truly, a very happy meal.

Then this morning the Gentleman trained me & I sweated it all out again. This morning also marks the 3rd time this week I've taken a hard hit to the face. Happily, my nose & teeth are still intact, though my teeth barely made it this morning. Duh, mouthpieces exist for a reason...

A Lovely Day

2009-05-11T22:50:00.005-05:00

Last Saturday while I was helping to plan an unrealized obstacle course (this means I was writing down what I was told to write) The General sauntered in & gave me a self defense technique to break down & teach the bits of, like, right now. I do mean he sauntered, too. The General is forever pushing me off the cliff with one hand and catching me with the other. Turned out well, he said it was good, though thanks to New York E's video I am very much aware that when I'm thinking about how to do a demonstration while I'm doing it, its not truly as dynamic as it needs to be. Still, its getting better... at least none of the students yelled "That's not how you do it! Fraud!". Hmm, I seem to be lowering my standards...

After class I helped Mighty Mouse teach a ladies self defense seminar. As I've said before, Mighty Mouse really is mighty. She should work for the Secret Service or something. When she demonstrates knees & stops to explain something she still holds you down with her whole weight on you. Clearly this is what I need to be doing. I can tell you after this experience, even tiny little people you can carry around in your pocket are heavy. This is good, because I want to be heavy, too!

We had lots of first time ladies, very nice ladies with nice shoes and hair. Very polite. They giggled when Mighty Mouse told them if they're attacked they have to fight like an animal. I hope some of them come train with us. One person (I'm not sayin' who) told me she "already knew" some of this stuff because she took a bag class, once, a year ago. I wanted to pinch her. I've been doing this stuff for two years, obsessively, & still don't feel like I "know" it. But everybody was a good sport & really tried, and you can't ask for more than that. We worked palm heels, groin kicks, knees, bear hugs, & choke from the front with a 2 handed pluck. Mighty Mouse had them pick each other up, bear hug style, then try to pick each other up while the pick-ee was basing out hard. A few of the ladies had back issues so I ran around picking up their partners, which was great fun for some strange reason. I think next time it might be a good idea to have handouts with recommended books about self-defense and phone numbers for hotlines and websites for places like Safeplace. Maybe what to expect from the police and/or hospital if they're attacked. Probably most of the ladies would just throw it way, but it might really help someone who needs it.

Anyway, after that we went to Spike's Super Bad Ass Picnic, which was so much fun. We swam and ate jello shots. We did other things, too, but you could just stop right there & still have a great day. The Machine did an amazing job running things. When the Gentleman & I walked up to do clean up duty it was pretty much already spic & span & Jackie told me the Machine had already decided it was clean up time & everyone had better get the hell out of the way. That's a good thing, by the way. It was a beautiful day from top to bottom & I am going to miss Spike so much its giving me an actual little pain "center mass", as we say. I don't like it when people go away.

2009-05-08T08:15:00.004-05:00

Ed gave me the dvd, bless him, and what an eye-opener. The good news is I look really comfortable & confident speaking in front of the group. But physically I'm more confident on knees than on choke from the front with a 1 handed pluck. I'm comfortable talking about it, but not as animated physically, so I need to be more aggressive & my movements need to be larger. No wonder people keep telling me that. I'm still thinking about being correct on the choke instead of just trying to kill my attacker with a giant ball of whoop-ass. What I saw on the tape is not what I am experiencing in my body while I'm doing it, so seeing myself from the outside was a huge help. Now I can fix that because I understand it.

Also, I'm doing this weird circle motion thing with my hands while I'm in fighting stance. GB started making fun of me for it yesterday, but I didn't really get what I was doing. Then when I saw it on film I actually laughed out loud because it looks completely ridiculous. I look like I'm trying to put a spell on The Pen, or like he's a cobra coming out of a basket & I'm trying to mesmerize him. (The Pen is CB's new name, because he's a writer.)

Also, I'm out of shape. It doesn't show up on the film & I don't look any different, but I'm gassing out really quickly when I do bag work, so Big Daddy J has put me on a new training regimen. Ouch. Clearly, I need it, because I'm pooped from yesterday's training, & I used to train like that all the time & feel fine. This pic is of me from my last class of the day, KO Bag. I'm the one who got KO'd!

I look better on the video doing knees because I'm having an absolute blast & love cranking out hard knees, & it shows. So that's what I need to feel when I'm doing everything, which will come with still more practice. It appears that I'm actually not yet perfect. I guess my mom was just kidding.

2009-05-06T11:13:00.002-05:00

So I was a nervous wreck all day yesterday, obsessing over Phase. I can't keep that up, I'll have an ulcer by the time it actually gets here. Then I got to krav for teacher training & CB was feeling exactly the same, which calmed me down. We got to work, with Relentless breaking us down with heavy bag combos, then immediately making us teach something. The 2nd thing I taught was choke from behind with a push, which I don't even really know how to execute, much less know the teaching points for. I don't think I've done it since I was in level 1! Instead of freaking out or being nervous, I just let Relentless & the Gentleman walk me through it, & will be working on that, push from the front, & headlock in a private lesson with Relentless tomorrow.

Next, CB & I assisted in the Dragon's level 1 class, which was huge! 30 people, though it seemed like much more, as they completely filled up the room. I taught knees, which is my favorite thing in the world, and choke from the front with a one-handed pluck. I think I did really well on both of them, but we'll see when the film comes out. New York E. was filming & says he'll burn me a CD.
CB taught round kicks, and considering his legs were shaky from his run earlier, he did well, too. His kicks look strong. CB is so sweet and laid back I wasn't sure if he'd be commanding enough in front of a class, but he's tough up there! Wowee, you just never do know who's got a tiger inside them. I'm so glad he's going to Phase at the same time as me, it'll be a big comfort to have a familiar face around, even though we won't be partnering, I'm sure. He's very tall, he needs a big guy, and I'm sure I'll end up with someone closer to my size, as well.

After that I did a little yoga & a little MMA, couldn't stay for either class for the full time. Mudslide held pads for me in MMA, & is an outstanding partner. He whacked me so hard one time my own "blocking" (ha) hand whacked me right in the eyeball. My blocks got stronger after that.

Top Dawg

2009-05-04T14:07:00.004-05:00

You just never know when this martial arts stuff is going to come in handy. The other day I was in my neighbor's front yard, letting their toddler pet my big 60 lb. Australian Shepherd, Raleigh. Raleigh is so peaceful & laid back that his nickname is the Raleigh Lama.

Well, their little yap-yap-rat-dog was tied up about 20 feet away & yapping loudly at us non-stop, like a recording on a loop designed to make us confess to some heinous crime. This is standard behavior for the tiny furball, but this time it was really bugging Raleigh. He started to growl. I was telling the little girl it was time for us to go when the Raleigh Lama suddenly turned into Cujo and the shit hit the fan.

He lunged & went for that little dog so fast I'm not sure it would show up on film. I flew after him & dragged him back, he fought me (the little bastard), & managed to get away, jumped on the little dog again, with the neighbor lady screaming her head off & trying to grab her little dog while I wrestled with Raleigh. Now, in the past couple of years I've been around 2 other dog fights. One where a big dog escaped his leash & attacked Raleigh (who promptly kicked his ass), and the 2nd was two neighbor dogs. Both times I was scared & tried yelling or kicking the dogs to make them stop. Useless. This time I didn't hesitate to jump right on him, & the 2nd time I had Raleigh I quickly mounted him, got him in a rear naked choke, & sank my weight down on him to pin him. When he couldn't get away he started barking at the other dog, really mean dog-swear-words, so I clamped my hand hard around his snout to shut him up. He fought a little bit, wiggling his head, but then just gave up.

The other dog wasn't even hurt, Raleigh was just trying to make a point. But it was while I was reviewing the event for Jackie that I realized how krav & BJJ training has paid off for me! I didn't even think, I just reacted & went straight to what my instructors have had me do in class over & over again. In practice I often have limited (cough) success, but when I needed it, it was there. Yay!

Congratulations to the Gentleman for finishing his Phase B Apprentice Test! You are amazing & I'm extremely proud of you!

2009-04-29T20:16:00.004-05:00

Last night started with the Gorgeous Bastard, level 3/4. Sparring. Translation: me getting hit. I KNOW I should warm up before class, because I'm completely useless for the first 20-30 minutes if I don't, but somehow I always manage to chat with my friends instead of warming up. Then I get hit in the face. Gotta address that. Also I was SO sore from Monday's Bataan Death March - I mean Crossfit - that I could barely get my butt off the floor to kick my attacker during the Get Your Butt Off The Floor & Kick Your Attacker exercise. We also worked with knife attacks, but the absolutely coolest thing that happened was when Miss C, my partner for the evening, advanced & gave me a hard vertical front kick to the center of my chest. This very petite woman literally lifted me COMPLETELY off the floor & sent me flying backward like I was Wylie Coyote & landed me flat on my ass. I mean I was completely airborne. It was freaking awesome! We will now start to replace Chuck Norris with Miss C, as in...Superman has pictures of Miss C on his pajamas...Miss C isn't afraid of the dark, the dark is afraid of Miss C...Jesus may be able to walk on water, but Miss C can swim through land...Miss C puts the laughter in manslaughter.

Thank God for yoga to calm me down! We did loooooong stretches & it was soooooo nice. As usual, someone attacked Spike & beat the poo out of him. You can set your watch by that event.

Lastly was MMA with the Professor. Coolest thing: my partner for focus mitt combos was this big guy who was supposed to say, "shoot!" & I would shoot in & pick him up as if to dump him. He said we wouldn't do that because he weighs 215 pounds & I wouldn't be able to pick him up. Sounds like a challenge! But of course I picked him up! When I do pushups I don't push myself up, I push the earth down! So I liked that I could pick him up. That dude better not have been hopping.

Best of luck to: Bam Bam, who has the gnarliest leg wound I've ever had the misfortune to see. I thought about amputating it with my pocketknife to help her out, but she got away.

And Beastie, who literally beat the stuffing out of a heavy bag before my very eyes. I think he'll be doing the same to an opponent in the ring in the very near future.

And The Gentleman, our brilliant star, who is off to his Phase B test this weekend. I feel sorry for the other people there trying to measure up to you!

Left Behind

2009-04-25T16:29:00.003-05:00

Well, I wanted to go to Dallas for the John Pascal seminar, but nooooooooo! Parker's not a real instructor yet & gets kicked to the curb! You may have eluded me this time, Pascal, but its not over yet! I'll get you, my pretty!

Kinda worked out though, because I got a chance to teach with the General, which I haven't done in a long time. The General will NOT give me a break, and I'm not kidding. He nails me for everything and anything that's out of order, so I wanted to see what he'd say since its been, I don't know...a couple of months since we've been together? Anyway, he let me teach a lot of level 1, then a lot of the intro class, then we went to lunch with his kids. And he actually said I was good! Woo hoo! I kept waiting for the long list of my screw-ups, but it just never came. He said my dynamic demonstrations should be a little more aggressive, though the knees were good...well, he said I did do one goofy thing. I kneed the hell out of him during the demonstration, then I stepped back & said, "knees!" with a tiny flourish, like a precious little princess with pink unicorn posters in her bedroom. He said he couldn't even look at me because he wanted to laugh. If that's the worst thing he's got to tell me, I've come a long way. I'm feeling very happy right now!

2009-04-22T10:16:00.003-05:00

Last night my mother-in-law came with my stepdaughter to watch the level 3/4 class, taught by the Gorgeous Bastard. She'd never seen krav before & wanted to see with her own eyes what I won't shut up about. It was a great class, & she really enjoyed it. My stepdaughter made fun of how my hair was messed up from the head butts & of the funny faces I make when I exert myself. Some things never change. I got to work with Miss C, a rare opportunity for me nowadays, but was surprised to find myself insanely jealous that a new female guest was working with the Gentleman & doing everything very well. New chicks aren't supposed to come into my class & do everything right, especially with my favorite training partners! To make it worse, she was a nice person, and quite lovely. How miserable!

Next was yoga, this class is always full now, and there are always new faces, which is nice. We did balancing poses & handstands. I have been very paranoid about handstands, as its handstand pushups that caused my shoulder injury & forced me out of training for 2 months, but it was easy & I think I'm not scared any more. I made that handstand my bitch & sent it home cryin'.

After that I did a few rounds on the pads in the Professor's MMA class, but had to go home early, as it was my mother-in-law's last night in Austin. Then, as I was leaving I met up with Le Roi by accident & since I never see him I took the opportunity to interview him for the website. Its a shame I never get to work with him, he seems like he is really on the ball. He also gave me some weightlifting moves to do to increase my strength. I'm not sure how to integrate it into my workout week, though...if it should temporarily take the place of crossfit, or if I should do it in the afternoon on the day of a morning crossfit? On what would have been an off day? I don't want to do anything that will make to too wrecked for krav, but I suppose I could take a handful of Advil & get through it that way. Especially if I bitch a lot about how sore I am, that always helps. I'll ask around, since I work with a bajillion workout experts, I could close my eyes at the studio & throw a rock & it would hit someone who could give me a good answer.

A Tourist In My Hometown

2009-04-18T16:34:00.002-05:00

Every year my husband rides the MS150 from Houston to Austin, and I work the event as a volunteer. Jackie's uncle David (Jackie is my husband) has multiple sclerosis and so this is a very personal issue for our family. We came down to Houston several days early so Jackie could see some clients, and I took the opportunity to find some krav classes.

Krav Maga Houston had a level 1/2 class on Thursday night, so I jumped in, looking forward to seeing instruction from somebody I'd never seen before, and to finding some fresh ideas to steal! Everybody at the school was very gracious and welcoming to me & my parents, who've never seen a krav class & were curious to watch one. The room was small & the class was huge, which always ramps up the energy in a room. I was chatting with some long-time students who said that since KMH has moved to this location enrollment has skyrocketed. My teacher could have been very scary looking - big muscles, bald head, beautiful 1/4 sleeve tattoos - but he had a big smile for everyone and was very approachable, very nice. We started off with a brief warmup & moved right into focus mitt work. My partner told me it was her first time, but said she takes fitness classes there. I guess they use the focus mitts in those classes, because she knew all the punching combinations & the basics of stance, movement, etc. Actually, she was by far the best first timer I've ever worked with. She was pooped from punching, but she was a tiger anyway, and that's always a fun partner. My mom said you could hear me yelling out combo numbers over the whole class. Surprise, surprise, Parker's mouth strikes again. After we worked various combos we moved on to a basic jab-cross-slip move, then made it jab-cross-slip-cross-hook. A very smooth & natural feeling combination. We worked that for the whole rest of the hour and then did about 45 seconds of non-stop 100% knees each, just to squeeze out that last bit of juice.

I'd like to thank the staff & students at Krav Maga Houston for their very warm welcome, and I very much look forward to training there again as soon as I can. And as for the idea I'll be stealing....we did these wicked little hops in the warmup, I don't remember what they were called so I'll give them an evil name. You squat down like you're in sumo squat with your elbows on your knees & using just your feet & calves you hop up & down in place, maintaining your squat the whole time. Ouch. Get ready, Austin!

If you'd like to visit Krav Maga Houston, check out their website, www.kravmagahouston.com for all the info you'll need.

I Beat You Up Now

2009-04-14T20:53:00.002-05:00

Haven't been posting much lately. Just been, you know, living my life. But I can't stop thinking about this great MMA class I had last Thursday. We often roll at the end of class, not for timed rounds, just endlessly until someone finally burns out.

Usually, I tend to pause a lot while we roll, trying to think about what I'm supposed to be doing, asking a lot of questions. Then the other day I watched the Gentleman roll with the Professor. Now, the Gentleman is quite a prodigy in krav, but he doesn't really know what he's doing in MMA. At all. But he didn't let that stop him! He just fought like a demon with a belly full of tequila and a score to settle. He went hard & never stopped thrashing around and trying to get position, even though he didn't know what on earth he'd do with it if he got it. I liked that. I'm sticking my toe in the baby pool and he's doing cannon balls in the deep end. So I thought I'd give that a shot.

So on Thursday the Professor asked if I wanted to roll with him & I said, "Sure!" And off we went. I didn't think about anything or really try to get any submission (as if I could, against the Professor!). I just fought like a wolverine. It was sooooo much more fun that way! Until the Professor took my back & started squeeeezing my waist between his thighs making me scream like I was convinced I was being ripped apart (I was). The more I howled the more he'd giggle & squeeze me again. Villain. Then I rolled with Mudslide & then the Gentleman. Of course they all beat me, I don't know what the hell I'm doing, but it was the most fun I've ever had in MMA. A few things I learned: #1 - I can go a lot longer & harder than I thought I could, which is nice. #2 - When I go hard I howl like I'm giving birth to a walrus. The whole time. #3 - Turning your brain off & letting your body go crazy is good in every which way. I keep having to learn this one over & over, my brain won't shut up. Some day it'll stick, if I don't give up. That's what I keep telling myself, anyway!

Crafty Boy

2009-04-08T20:15:00.003-05:00

Relentless again. He has the sleight of hand thing going on. In teacher training yesterday he had me work choke from the front with a 2 handed pluck over & over, insisting that I say it & perform it just right. Then he was on to the Gentleman & I was completely off his radar...or so he led me to believe.

The scribe has mentioned to me that sometimes he's nervous to come to class & I was feeling that way going in to the Gorgeous Bastard's level 3/4 for some reason, so I offered to help out in Relentless' level 1 - well, it was a huge class with loads of new people, so there. Relentless waved me off saying, no, no, this is your night to train, go train. Okay.

About 15 minutes before the end of class he walked into my class looking a bit flustered & said he needed my help after all, the class was just too big. Okay, I'm happy to help. I walked around & made a few corrections & was making light conversation with Relentless by the stereo when he turned his face quickly right into mine & staring daggers into my eyes said, "Choke from the front with a 2 handed pluck teach it right now, NOW!" And he quickly turned off the music & yelled for everyone to take a knee. EEEEEK!

I should have known this was coming. In fact, I did. After last Saturday I told my husband, "Okay, I've taught well twice in a row, Relentless is going to throw me a curve ball & see how I do." I swear to God I said that! And yet I walked straight into the fire like I'd never heard of heat.

And yipee! It went really well. I hit all the teaching points without blabbering endlessly & didn't sound like Little Bo Peep. Cuz I'm teh Big Bad Wolf, baby!

Welcome Wyatt

2009-04-05T22:41:00.003-05:00

I got a surprise when I went to the hospital today to meet my new friend. I was excited for Mami K and Big Daddy J, and happy to meet Wyatt, but I am not really a baby person, generally. I never know what to discuss with them.

Not taking into account that it was fairly early on a Sunday, I expected to find other friends there, cutting up & making plans for Wyatt's fight training. We are a raucous group, always laughing and rushing on to the next thing. Instead I found a quiet, tranquil room. The only light filtered gently from the curtained window. Mami K was alone with her son, nursing him. I wasn't sure if I should enter. She let me in.

Wyatt was tightly swaddled and wearing a tiny little hat. Mami K & I chatted a bit. Perhaps in this intimate moment I should have left them to themselves, but somehow I couldn't. I was completely mesmerized. I absolutely couldn't take my eyes off them, even when Big Daddy J came in the room. Like most members of my generation, I can distance myself from just about anything with a clever, smart aleck remark, and often do. But I found myself transfixed because right in front of me I was witnessing something you just don't see every day. Inexhaustible love. I was extremely moved, and unmasked. Now I'm kind of excited to see him again.

Saturday morning

2009-04-04T16:54:00.002-05:00

Relentless has been incredibly generous about giving me teaching time in his classroom. So today I taught straight punches to the focus mitts, which I prefer tremendously to striking a tombstone. We also worked advancing punches & low advancing punches, front kicks & choke from the front with a 2 handed pluck.

Let me give you a piece of advice. If you make Relentless mad & you think he's about to hit you, quickly run far away from him. Or fall down and play dead. Or pick up a brick and start bashing yourself in the head with it, because that will be less of a beat down than Relentless will give you. In my naivete I agreed to demonstrate an absorption drill with him striking me with the mitts until it was time for my straight punches. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. That boy beat me like maybe if he just hit me hard enough he was gonna cure cancer. Sometimes when people hit me hard I get the urge to hit them back. When Relentless hits me I get the urge to go tell my mom!

Sweet Redemption

2009-04-02T22:38:00.002-05:00

Yes, I agree, its revenge that is truly sweet, but redemption is nice, too. I had a little talkie with myself about my performance & my attitude. I reminded myself again that if I'm not enjoying myself in krav there's no point in doing it & basically gave myself permission to not be such a serious sourpuss. So I went in today & assisted Relentless & just said, "Damn the torpedoes, I'm jumping in with both feet". So I did. And it was fun! And I did much, much better. Fancy that.

We also had teacher training today, with the Gorgeous Bastard, which is always fun, except he made me stand there expressionless again, without moving, to get my review of my performance. I would take more pleasure in having my head shaved & being plunged into ice water. Asking me to not be animated is like asking me not to eat ice cream. There is just no realistic way to achieve that.

Next hour was MMA with Mudslide. I partnered with the Gentleman. I tell you, if I could spar or roll with the Gentleman while eating ice cream, the world would be a perfect place. We shrimped to get out of mount & did reversals, then rolled. I also got to roll with the Professor, which was just the bow on the package. Having MMA at the end of the night is like having your favorite dessert at the end of a good meal. Perfection. Can you tell I'm hungry?

Awake

2009-03-31T22:21:00.002-05:00

Quite an eye-opener tonight. I'm writing these little staff bios for the new Fit and Fearless website & I was interviewing Dr. J tonight after she taught yoga. She has really got it together, very insightful. She absolutely made the light bulb switch on in my head, even though we were talking about something a little different. She was telling me how yoga forces you to pay attention to just this moment to progress, & I realized that's been my problem lately in krav. You see, I'm progressing quickly in Crossfit & MMA - because I don't really care about them. I want to do well in whatever I'm doing at that moment, but past that I don't care - there's no agenda for "how I should be doing". I'm just having fun, really. But in krav I have a huge agenda, a definite idea of how I should be doing, and am very tied to the outcome. And you know what, I haven't had real fun in quite a while. And you know what else, I'm not progressing. The truth is, I'm regressing. My skills in both technique and teaching have been getting steadily just a little bit worse instead of continually just a little bit better, and that's just no fun at all. Mami K said to me a few weeks ago, "Who cares how long it takes? Just work on what you need to work on, who cares if it takes a year?" I thought that was a terrible idea! Turns out she was right. I think I'm going to stop worrying about how I'm doing & just have fun again. I hope I get to pass my teacher training test, but for now I just have to let that go and learn to enjoy myself again, both in training and teaching. To just GO. If I can't do that, then what the hell am I doing here?

Seeing Things

2009-03-31T07:38:00.011-05:00

Oh, now I know why so many people hate the holidays! Yesterday in Ladies Crossfit we did the 12 Days of Christmas. It was my first time, and oh, my dear ones, it was hard. In a good way. I noticed that at first it was just like in krav - I'm very slow & uncoordinated, my moves are a bit awkward & tentative. But once I got cranked up I was burning like a house on fire, baby. About a third of the way through I start to feel a groove, even though its an effort to perform well, my brain shifts into another gear & my body takes over. I think that's one of the keys to why we keep coming back to this stuff over and over. Its like extreme anger/aggression or great sex or a particularly delicious meal. Your brain shuts down and your body takes over and you're 100% in the moment. Total lizard brain. By the end my body was shaking as I was trying to perform the moves, but I wouldn't let it slow down. Its funny what'll pop into your head. I could actually see (in my head) The Professor looking at me and saying, "Come on, girl", just like he does in real life when I start to fatigue. And then, The General, alternately barking at me to keep going & smiling at me encouragingly. I don't remember what he "said", I just remember I didn't want to fail in front of him, so I sped up. I have a pretty vivid imagination & it really helps sometimes! Also, I was actually talking to myself out loud, softly, "Keep going, you can do it..." And I did it. I came in with the best time, using good form, even though I was practically hallucinating from pushing myself so hard. I think I'm getting stronger.

I came back later that evening & taught my very first class on my own, a Fighting Fitness class. It was fun & I want to do it again. Its shadowboxing with little hand weights for 2 minute rounds, with "rest" rounds between each. Rest rounds consist of pushups, mountain climbers, crunches, etc. Its pretty exhausting, for the students, I mean. I was a little nervous before class, but it was good. The students seemed to be having a good time and they were working hard, which I always appreciate.

In case you ever wondered if all this training is really useful, here is a picture of me levitating. You're not gonna learn to do that down at your regular gym, folks! Krav rocks.

You may sometimes see me taking pictures in class. If you want to see if you're in a photo, go to flickr.com/photos/parkerwestbrook. Look in the sets to find the most likely spot where you'd be: mma, krav, yoga, or crossfit. Feel free to download yourself!

Engulfed in Flames

2009-03-28T18:07:00.002-05:00

Mayday! Mayday! Parker's down! She's burning! Ooooh...yes, she's toast.
Taught hammerfist today in Relentless' level 1 class. Unsure of how to reconcile the 3 first time students need for greater instruction with the more advanced students need to get working, I decided the solution was to talk too long. And I did that very well. Talked less on side hammerfist, even less on knees. Hooray. Then I "taught" defense against choke from the side. My attacker, a large student, was shoving me sideways on the attack & instead of stopping & telling him to please not push, I defended anyway - failed to get the pluck! - and kept fighting him off. Badly. A match was struck & I started to smell gasoline. Then I gave a beautifully unclear explanation of the technique, moved them on to drywork, which kind of looked like a spastic dance-off. My clothes started smoking. I let them get to work and I don't know what the hell they were doing, and I definitely don't know what the hell I was doing, but I was clearly going down in flames. The funny thing is, a student came up behind me to ask me a question after class in the lobby & heard me telling Miss C what I'd just done & he said, "You know what, I'm a teacher & you need to understand that things look very different to your audience than they do from your perspective. We thought you were doing great." I am now engaged to be married to this man. HA, good thing my husband isn't reading this...

Anyway, that took a bit of the sting out of it, and I'll be working on that technique next week in teacher training. A lot.

2nd hour was The Gentleman's bag class. This class is awesome. Crossfit is really starting to pay off, I can feel myself getting stronger & having more endurance, and being more willing and able to push through exhaustion. I take back all the stuff I said about Crossfit, its making a huge difference for the better in my training.

3rd hour, MMA, worked with Strongirl again (yay!). We worked some of those weird, complicated BJJ moves from the guard where you're reversing people and yanking on them, and doing super secret sneaky moves. Stuff that looks really complicated, until you realize it makes perfect sense, but then you can't explain it at all, you can only do it. We did that stuff.

4th hour, just worked one-on-one with The Professor, working on patching up holes in my game, building aggression in my moves, working the focus mitts, sprawling against his takedowns, fighting off his clinches. That boy is strong. Then just a little more groundwork, learned how to give the world's coolest beatdown while I have someone trapped in my guard, then a most excellent armbar. Mostly it was just bang bang bang for an hour, the kind of workout I live for. I just get so happy and excited after training like that, I want to jump around like a puppy, by mostly I just have to lay on the ground, sweating and panting. Its so good good good!

Yesterday & Today

2009-03-27T19:33:00.002-05:00

Sorry I've not been posting, I've been ill for several days & not attending class. Now its all good, though...

Last night started out with teacher training with the Gorgeous Bastard. He said he's going to be doing all the Thursday teacher training sessions from now on. You don't hear me complaining. Except that he made me teach straight punches using no words whatsoever, then he made me stand there & get my reviews from my classmates without allowing me to speak at all or show any kind of facial expression. I thought I would explode. Then Spike taught me how to make a snake with my hands and I felt all better.

Next hour was assistant teaching with Detention. A big class! Again he started class with straight punches. A good idea for me to steal, I think. I taught choke from the front with a 2 handed pluck, but we didn't really have time to work it much, because we spent a lot of time working the focus mitts & doing drills. I got to demonstrate the drill on the mitts, too. I just love beating the crap out of those things.

Next was Mudslide's Ladies MMA class. I partnered with Strongirl, thank God! She is a good sport when I do poorly, and a good opponent when I do well. And when I just really don't want to do something, I tend to do it poorly. For instance, I hate takedowns. My little skinny neck always whips back when I slam down onto my back if its me being taken down, & I always worry about going too hard for my partner if I'm taking them down. I don't want to do it, consequently I do it very poorly, and therefore I don't want to do it. You see how that works? Its pretty much that way with everything I tend to suck at - I just don't want to do it, so my body is trying, but everything in me is resisting. Gotta fix that.

Now I used to not want to do Crossfit, but once I realized it was going to help me be a better kravver, I jumped on board & started to do well. You see there, this stuff is all in your head.
Today we did, um...all this crazy hard stuff. Jumping on tires and pushups & sumo squat things, and wall ball death dealers & the beastly lean back ab attack. I don't know the names of these things, I just know how to kick their ass! I love it when Scarlet comes to class, we're constantly out to beat each other - cheering each other on, but screaming TIME like our lives are at stake when we're done. Spike & this student who is still unnamed were in there, too, with other students from the Marines officer candidate school. Spike & my student are gonna wipe the floor with those boys, that's what I'm saying! Mami K took pictures, I'll add some later if they came out. Bye!

At Least I Got It On A Platter

2009-03-19T21:03:00.002-05:00

Mmmm, thursdays. First hour teacher training. Mami K had us teach whatever she told us to & then give her a drill for the same technique. I cheated & gave a drill we all know but haven't seen in a while, clearly I need to learn how to create drills. Its on the list!

2nd hour, assisting Detention in level 1, his classes are so much fun. I think I have the best schedule ever. Lets see, palm heels, round and straight knees, then, God help them, 360 defenses. These are still quite painful for me, but not as much as they once were, and those students were suffering, baby! Even I have a giant black knot on my wrist, though I don't remember how I got it, which is refreshing. I usually like to relive every excruciating instant of the strike. Jeez, if only I was kidding about that.

3rd hour, MMA, with Mudslide. I was a little skittish about jumping in for a big workout after my festival of vomit a couple of days ago, so I filmed the guys working until I couldn't take it anymore & dragged a guy out of the lobby to hold pads for me. We worked together until sparring time, but he's new & has no gear so he left & I went back to filming until I spoke the words that sealed my doom: "Beastie, will you go a round with me & Mudslide can film it?" Those words rank right up there with "Let's besiege the Alamo".

Sweet Beastie is hyooooge and a very accomplished MMA fighter, so even though I knew he would destroy me, he also has the best control in the room, so I knew he wouldn't injure me.

My left leg is still tingling from his kicks and its been over an hour. I have never been punched & kicked so much and so hard, with so little effort from my opponent. That's hard by my standards, not his. He was absolutely taking it easy on me, but I still felt like he'd dragged me down to the laundromat & thrown me in the dryer with a bunch of rocks. Sigh. I watched myself on film & was shocked at how stiff I looked! I would list all the things I did wrong, but you don't have time.

I will encapsulate it for you. Worst comment by Mudslide, "You're supposed to lead with your jab. Instead you lead with your face and that's why you get hit so much!"

Best comment by Beastie, "That was really fucking good, Parker! I was pounding you and you just kept coming back for more, I couldn't believe it!"

Yeah, ha ha, I couldn't believe it either! Seeing yourself on film is really eye-opening, I hope we do it more because just seeing myself that one time is going to be a huge help. More, please.

All Clean

2009-03-17T20:09:00.002-05:00

So I take these little pills to keep my skin clear, and sometimes they make me sick. (This is called 'foreshadowing'.)

Teacher training today with Relentless, he was putting us on the spot, which is becoming fun. I no longer think its the end of days if I mess it up. I know now that I'm there to learn & have stopped trying to be perfect, which has improved my performance. Mighty Mouse missed on basing out when she was doing the demonstration for the bear hug from the front where you are lifted off your feet & ended up on the ground on her back with the Gentleman on top of her. She fought him off & jumped up & he continued on quickly with the same attack, which she defended successfully. It looked so cool! Very real looking. I want to be like Mighty Mouse! She's kind of scary. My stomach was starting to feel a little weird...

Next hour, level 3/4, again with Relentless. We did one of his famous exhausting warmups that used to scare the bejesus out of me, but now they're fun, even though they're crazy hard. Toward the end we got into groups of 4 & did non-stop chokes, monkey-in-the-middle-style, which signaled the end of me keeping my head out of the toilet. After my turn I sped out of the room, almost knocking over Smash, my favorite toddler, and had a thoroughly cleansing vomit. Then I walked watery-eyed & wobbly-legged back to class, knowing that if we sparred my secret weapon would be my breath. Yes, come clooooser.....

I ended up working with Speedy on the Thai pads, then we worked reverse guillotine & full nelson (effective for the defender, sucky for the attacker), and then sparred. Oh, dear lord, I thought I would die, I could feel my stomach churning and wanted to quit so badly for every second of that damn class, especially sparring. But I didn't. I admit I didn't have a very chipper attitude. Thank God Relentless started yelling at me to keep going & stay in the fight. My head was spinning & everything seemed surreal, so I just latched onto his voice and kept swinging. Then more vomit. Awesome.

Funny how things work out. I have come to realize that I'm kind of wimpy & need to be able to take a little more punishment than I currently can & keep going strongly, not just going through the motions. So I've been thinking I needed to find myself in some situations in class where I wanted to quit, but I had to keep on, and by experiencing that repeatedly, I would become stronger. Well, I got my wish, and it sucked! But I'm not sorry, because it really is what I need to experience to grow. If only I needed to experience a trip to Paris to grow....

Secret Elbows, Don't Look!

2009-03-15T15:49:00.003-05:00

Saturday morning, assisting The Gentleman & The General in level 1. I taught palm heels & let the drill go on too long, so I decided to let the 2nd group on on too long too, just to be fair. I think I just escaped a lynching! Its time to start learning how to time class sections out properly, I've just always depended on the lead teacher to do that, but its time to learn it in my own. Then, when I taught elbow #1, The Gentleman told me to quickly demonstrate all 7 of them first, which I did. But somehow I ended up turned around & my arm was facing the mirror, which I didn't catch til I was about to finish. So, these are secret elbows, you can't see! You want these elbows, you pay extra! Unsure whether to backtrack or go on, I decided to go on, since we weren't really covering anything but #1 anyway, which is my favorite elbow. A week or so ago in groundfighting The Gentleman was switching position on me (literally 'on me') & barely hit me in the mouth with his elbow, but its such a sharp 'boink!' that I instinctively felt the tooth to make sure it wasn't loose. If a little baby tap like that hurts, I don't care to ever find out how the real thing feels!

2nd hour was The Gentleman's bag class, which is its own little preview of the torments of Hell. I love this class. Strangely, my muscles give out way before my lungs. I don't feel winded, but my quads and my shoulders feel like they're moving through wet concrete, they won't go. So, what's the answer? More bag classes, weightlifting, both? Something else? Hopefully the answer is more carbs. Yeah.......

Next class was MMA, we worked only on the ground, continuing to learn variations of what we've been working on the past few weeks. I learned to apply a triangle better than I ever have, that one's always confused me. Its an inescapable fact, choking people is fun!

Thursday Night

2009-03-13T07:27:00.005-05:00

Its always fun to have Detention. As a teacher, I mean. I call him that because he's so hyper & naughty that if I'd had him as a student in my middle school class, I'd have given him detention every damn day. But as a teacher, he's a blast! He let me lead the warmup & I had them run relays across the room - you should have heard the groans when I said it was bear crawl time - hee hee! He always starts class with straight punches, which I find interesting & effective. Its a great way to focus your head on what you're about to do & an important skill to continuously practice. I also taught palm heel strikes, a technique I love. Interesting wrinkle - when we were doing side hammerfist a big muscle-y guy I've never seen before was just nailing his partner so hard he was hurting her. I stopped them and asked him, "Can you see this person is half your size?" and told him to lighten up on smaller partners. I didn't get a chance to see if he corrected it, as Detention had everyone switch padholders right then, but I did realize I'm going to have to watch my tone with people. Every emotion I feel is plastered on my face & I was very annoyed with this person, so I'd better control my tone of voice under those circumstances.

One fun thing that happened was when I was demonstrating the absorption drill - where the padholder with the focus mitts is smacking you all over your body with hard smacks & then claps the mitts together as a signal for you to strike - I saw an opening when Detention was smacking me & instinctively started to punch, even though it wasn't time. I pulled it back though and started grinning like a monkey, absorbing my hits - I'm taking it as a good sign that my instincts are going from being a defender to being an attacker.

Next hour was MMA, taught by Mudslide. I was lucky to get the Professor as my partner for an hour, I always learn a ton from him, and we were doing confusing techniques. I'm perplexed by my mediocre power on the ground. I'm pretty strong for my size, I think (?), but explosive moves on the ground continue to elude me. I'll get it, though, it'll just take a while. I'm okay with that now. I continue to seek out partners who are better than me, the Professor, the Gentleman, and Spike... working with more skilled people raises the bar and pushes me faster.

Beautfiul Tuesdays

2009-03-10T21:56:00.002-05:00

Once again, my favorite day of the week works its magic.

First hour, teacher training with the Gorgeous Bastard. We worked overhand knife attack defenses, fairly complicated & wordy instruction. GB taught it to me, Spike, & the Gentleman, then each of us had to teach it. That private with GB really paid off, because I was only a little nervous, mostly just from trying something completely new - so hurray! Spike taught, too. He's not training to teach krav, but to learn leadership for his Marines officer training. He should be teaching with us, though, he'll be good at it and it will help him any time he has to speak in front of people & explain things to them. I don't know how well I really did, GB will often say you did well just to be encouraging & keep you working at it. I think I did fine for the exercise, but there's loads of room for improvement.

Next was level 3/4, again with GB, & we worked some of the same knife defenses we did in teacher training - one thing I like about training with him is that we go over certain points in how to teach, then he does the exact same thing in class, so I get to hear him do it for me in teacher training, I get to try it myself, then I get to see it put to work in a real class. Its good. We also sparred quite a bit. Legs only sparring is not fun for me. I'm built like a giraffe, so I look ridiculous doing it. I also notice I'm pulling my face back too much to avoid being punched. Miss C & I are going to work on that tomorrow in a private with GB.

Next was yoga, something about today's class made me so calm and almost sleepy after every pose.

And finally, MMA, yay! Pad work for the first half of class. First the Professor held the pads for me, then ATX came in I worked with him. He was throwing these hard round kicks to the pad & a little voice told me I should put my mouthpiece in, because his control of his left leg round kicks is not that great. So I did, I put it in, and the very next kick he missed the pads completely & his leg came over the pads and straight at my face!! But in this respect he showed amazing control - he pulled the kick before it actually made contact. I felt the wind it created brushing my face, but my face remained intact. He would have broken my nose, so thank God he caught it in time. Next we did groundwork, more "queso" katami and arm bars.
Awesome night, can't wait til tomorrow's lesson!

Runnin' Up That Hill

2009-03-06T07:46:00.002-06:00

Once, when I was 12 years old, I was scuba diving with my family off the coast of Florida. During the hour we were under water, the winds picked up & the sea became very rough. Long story short, there was an accident and I almost died. The skipper of the boat had to jump into the water & drag me into the boat, saving my life. The next day, my stepfather insisted we spend the day scuba diving. He said if I didn't jump back in at once, the memory of the event would sink into me & I would become afraid of the water. He said the only way to master fear is to attack it and fight through it immediately. I've been doing it that way ever since.

You may have read a few entries ago that I completely freaked out when the Gorgeous Bastard came into the room while I was practice teaching, so I decided to jump in the water & book a private lesson with him to just teach.

Well, we did it. At first, I was ridiculous, a nervous wreck. I don't even remember what we started with because I was just trying, and failing, to get my brain and mouth to work at the same time. Its no secret that I pretty much think the stars & planets revolve around GB, and I adore him even more for this: he didn't take it easy on me. He very sweetly but firmly insisted I teach him the hard stuff - elbows, 360's, teaching in the style of a full classroom and a private lesson, teaching as if I don't have a partner to demonstrate on. I made a million mistakes. We kept going. Finally, I was just exhausted. Not because I was doing much physically, but because my heart had been going faster than a hummingbird's the whole hour, so when he told me to teach him one last technique I just thought, "Oh, screw it, I can't worry about this any more, I'm just gonna do it." And I did it. And I did it well! Halle-freaking-leujah. So now we'll see what happens next time he walks in while I'm teaching. I think I won't freak out anymore, but if I do...you know what I'll do next!

I Love Tuesdays!

2009-03-04T08:21:00.004-06:00

Oh! I love Tuesdays, because I get to do all my favorite things.

First hour was teacher training. At first teacher training was fun because I had my teachers all to myself and got loads of one-on-one help. Now teacher training is fun because there are several of us learning to teach different classes, so I get to learn from everyone's mistakes & successes.

Next hour was level 3/4 with the Gorgeous Bastard. Chokes & stick defenses, which we did outside. I love stick. It only hurts if you get smacked with the stick, whereas gun hurts every time they rip it out of your hand or you rip it from theirs. I noticed I didn't move smoothly, I felt very awkward the whole hour- probably because I didn't take the time to warmup & hit the bag or spar before class. What a huge difference that makes.

Next hour was yoga, Bon bon's first time to teach, ever! She did a really good job. Usually we're all cracking jokes & insults the entire class, but everyone was trying to be sweet since it was her first time & we were all quiet & obedient as little mice. Turns out that made her more nervous, so when she asked us why we were all being so quiet, the party started. We all elbow each other out of the way to get a spot on the wall for headstands now, I think its everybody's favorite pose. We also did a cool one called double downward dog - I'll try to attach a picture, if you don't see one, you know I'm still a technological infant.

Last hour was MMA with the Professor. We seem to have a new Tuesday night formula & I freaking love it. We start out with padwork, holding a focus mitt & a Thai pad. Thai pads are heavy, so if we keep this up I'll have a super strong right arm like Hellboy, then I knock you down, baby! Next we learn some groundwork, building upon whatever we did the week before. Last night we worked keylock & reverse keylock from a position called something like "kaysa katami". I couldn't tell exactly what the name was because everyone kept calling it "queso" & requesting chips and queso. Then we rolled. My partner was the Gentleman, who is made of pure fun and sunshine. I can't wait til next Tuesday!

Achille's Heel

2009-02-26T22:34:00.002-06:00

Well then, I'm in teacher training today, and its going really well. A few corrections, but mostly its, "My, my, Miss Parker, aren't you a clever girl?". And then the Gorgeous Bastard walks in and I turn into a babbling idiot. I think they wanted to take my temperature or call a priest to make sure I wasn't being possessed by the stupidest demon in Hell. And then the Gorgeous Bastard leaves, like a plague of locusts flying away, & I'm myself again.

I don't know what my freaking problem is, but its time I brought out the insecticide. Can't stand to have GB watch me teach, so I'm putting myself under his microscope - setting up a private lesson with him to do nothing but teach him for an hour. No fear is going to get the better of me.

Mighty Fine

2009-02-24T22:05:00.002-06:00

Tonight was my favorite kind of training night. Long, sweaty, breathless, challenging, & surrounded by my friends.

First hour the Gorgeous Bastard taught our teacher training session! He talked about running a classroom, the image you have to project, the way to treat people so that they are challenged but feel supported. Lucha Libre was there for the first time studying teaching Crossfit, & Spike & the Gentleman were there, as always. I suggested to Spike that he must be learning a lot about leadership that will serve him well when he goes to the Marines officer camp this summer - and he looked at me slyly & said, "Yeah, that's occurred to me, too." In fact, that's one of the things I'm appreciating so much about this training. I'm not just learning how to teach people to perform rote techniques, I'm learning how to lead.

2nd hour was level 3/4, again with GB - I watched him implementing some of the things he'd just taught us to do the hour before. Partnered with Mighty Mouse tonight, and really enjoyed it. A strange thing happened, though, and its happened before. We were doing a 3 person drill with Attila & I just totally blanked out. Its like aliens beamed out my brain for a few minutes & MM & Attila were looking at me like, "Girl, where are you?!" It doesn't happen as often as it used to, but I wish it would go away. Otherwise, I was on it & it was a great class.

3rd hour was yoga - I wonder if Dr. J would like us to shut up and quit making smart aleck remarks to each other? I hope not, because this is the funnest yoga class I've ever taken. We do challenging poses - which we are all getting better at - but we give each other endless shit the whole class. I notice everyone really tries hard to do a good job, though, so hopefully Dr. J sees that, too.

4th hour was MMA, with the Professor. Oh, I'm soooo happy! I actually tapped out a guy twice while we were rolling! Same move I used to make Spike tap last week though, they're going to be onto me soon. Actually, this kid already is. After the 2nd time I asked Leonidas to explain to him what he was doing wrong, then I never could pull it off again after that. Too bad, but there's no point in being an ass, he's there to learn just like I am. Another good thing was that the one time he made me tap it took him freaking forever, and he's an experienced wrestler, so that made me happy, too. He finally got me with a heel lock. I'm terrible at defending those, but I won't be for long. Also sparred a little standup with the Professor, he of the lightning hands. I'm a monkey on sedatives compared to him, but I'm learning.

Unexpected

2009-02-20T07:54:00.002-06:00

So I was talking to The Scribe last night in the lobby of F&F after class, telling him I'd like to write more about martial arts. He asked if I wanted to focus on women in MA & I realized I actually do. I was a bit surprised, because I've generally preferred training with men, but when I'm teaching I do find myself gravitating more toward women. And here's an example of why that is: there's a particular woman in level 1 I've thought about frequently because when she strikes she's very meek about it, she looks uncomfortable doing it, and I've wondered how I can help her past that. Then last night I peeked into bag class & saw her going crazy hard on the bag! So, what's the difference, mentally and emotionally for her, between striking a person holding a bag & just beating up a freestanding inanimate object? This is true of female beginners more often than not.

Part II of this is a strong memory I have of when I was very new to training, at Kim Soo Karate. There was a head-turningly beautiful woman, a brown belt, who was teaching me some basic strikes on the heavy bag. I was striking veeery meekly, very lightly. She asked me, "Why are you doing that?! Why do women always strike so softly? We have so much power and we never use it!" Then she started going apeshit on the bag to show me how to do it. But I simply could not get my head around behaving like that. It was like we were two different species & I just did not believe I could ever do what she did. I wish she could see me now! And still, I know I'm not delivering as hard as I can, as hard as I will be this time next year. That block isn't completely removed, though its on its way out.

This, in a nutshell, is why women like me find martial arts so addictive. I once saw myself as weak, and now I see myself as strong, and I run toward that vision like an escaping prisoner runs toward freedom.

Baby I'm Amazed

2009-02-18T12:45:00.003-06:00

Here's why I love Fit and Fearless. When you are training, they will only ever ask you for one thing: everything you have. They will ask you for all your effort, all your willingness to suffer. They will request all your focus, all your ability to face your fears, all your drive to keep fighting through bone deep exhaustion. They will ask you for all your sweat, and maybe even a little bit of your tears and blood.

And if you give them what they ask, you will get something remarkable in return: everything they have. They will give you their undivided attention, their patience, and their support. They will give you the knowledge they earned with their own blood, sweat, and tears. They will give you their time, and their faith that you will prevail, even when you doubt it yourself. They will push you when you need to go harder, and they'll give you a break when you really need it - though not when you just think you need it.

It's said that nature is red in tooth and claw, and that is the attitude I've taken toward my own training, both physically and mentally. In return I've received a massive grizzly bear defending me. And let me tell you, when you're fighting for something, its really nice to have a grizzly bear on your side.

Deceived!

2009-02-12T21:28:00.004-06:00

What I learned in krav today: If you smack a guy strongly enough in the balls, he'll stop choking you so hard. Hmmm....

So, I thought I had headlock from the side down. Wrong! Turns out my attackers in class have been taking it easy on me - now I know in with absolute certainty how important it is to go hard in class. I was delusional.

So today I spent a whole hour re-learning how to perform & teach headlock from the side. Daddy J is a very patient man. God bless The Gentleman & Spike for being such good sports & working with me. Especially Spike, I poked him right in the eye.

The most fun? Doing a different kind of defense in case I get taken to the ground - a real possibility if I'm surprised by a larger attacker. You roll out with the momentum & over again, ending in a modified side mount in a perfect position for strikes. I always thought BJJ was not going to be useful for me, that I just studied it for fun. Wrong again! Because of my BJJ training the technique worked like a dream, even though I was scared.

The other good thing was when Spike & The Gentleman, under strict orders from Daddy J, attacked me hard 10 times in a row in a continual stream of attacks, no pausing. Its scary, but exhilarating! And here's where the ball-bashing comes in. Poor Spike wasn't wearing a cup. The defense includes a groin strike. Because I am such an angel, I tried smacking his thigh to simulate the attack, but no go. He squeezed me like a fat grandmother at Christmas. So I nailed him right in his Christmas package. (Yeah, we know, Spike, its a gift ha ha.) Miraculously, his death grip on me loosened & I was able to complete the defense. The Gentleman was a tougher nut to crack. BWAHAHAHAHAHA! I got a million of 'em. He was wearing protection, & is no gentleman on the mat, but I was finally able to pull it off, thanks to my 3 great coaches.

Still have so much work to do, but I'm having so much fun doing it.

Yay!

2009-02-12T07:56:00.002-06:00

Last night's class went really well. It was a h-u-g-e class. I taught about half, The Gentleman taught the other half. I actually did really well, the only thing I messed up on was after teaching inside defenses I didn't know how to wrap it up so the Gentleman came in and saved me. Also, I've gotten used to just assisting & letting the lead teacher worry about time limits on the exercises. It allows me to spend more time individually with the students who have questions or need corrections, which is good, but now its time to master helping them while keeping an eye on the clock, and taking in the activities of the whole room. Kind of like working with my middle school students. Well, I've done it before, I can do it again.

And I've learned that I can focus much better during class if I spar or hit the bag for a few minutes just beforehand. It really focuses my brain & lets me relax and do what I need to do in class.

Mo' Bettah

2009-02-11T07:20:00.002-06:00

Hallelujah. Forever I've been wondering what my problem was, why I couldn't go as hard as I needed to in front of the class & finally I realized that I've been thinking of myself as an interloper up there in other people's class. In my mind it wasn't my class, so what the hell was I doing taking up time? Also, I realized I have a tendency to submit to Alpha Males. And you know, you'd think there would be only one Alpha, but they're all Alpha-types to one extent or another, and my level of meekness was in direct proportion to the lead teacher's level of Alpha-ness. Well, that was yesterday, baby!!

Once I realized the problem I was able to kill it, and I finally went back to my old bossy self last night in class. Doomsday (aka The Dragon) taped me teaching & let me watch it & I could see a major difference in my behavior, stance, everything. Finally. The cake isn't completely baked, yet, though, I could tell I still needed to be even stronger. Not a problem, I'm on it.

So tonight, The Gentleman, sweet sweet sweet, is letting me take his class. I've never taught a whole class before & just saw the lesson plan & its nothing I've ever taught before! D'oh!! This is gonna be fun...

Speaking of fun, last night in MMA I got to partner with the Library Lady. Oh, how I wish she would go to Apprentice whenever I do! She is so much fun to train with, we're well matched in size, strength, and temperament. Oh, well, I'll take time with her when I can get it. You know, my whole life the majority of my friends have been male, I've never really been able to relate to other females well. One thing I love about F & F is there are so many females there who actually like the things I like. Punching things, for instance. Fight chicks rule.

A Time For All Things - Part II

2009-02-07T17:47:00.003-06:00

And now is the time to get over myself. (If you have not read my previous post, from earlier today, please do so now. I'll wait.)

I've often noted that I couldn't care less how well I perform in Crossfit, or weightlifting, or running. If I do well, hurray, if I do poorly, I know I'll do better next time. Or I won't. But if I do poorly in krav, it eats at me without mercy. So I've been berating myself endlessly for my poor performance earlier today.

I called my best friend of 20 years, Missy T, for a thump in the head, but she wasn't home, so I laid on the floor thinking woe is me! You really should come to one of my pity parties, they freaking rock.

As I lay there wallowing my phone rings. Its BB, my friend with a black belt in Chayon-Ryu. So I asked her advice & she gave it to me. Like to hear it? Hear it goes:

1. Stop obsessing about Apprentice. You're worrying too much about the end result. You will improve when you focus on the process. Go to class, train, practice, get a little better every day. Do the best you can in the moment and let it go.

2. This is clearly something you need to work on in your life, and you're being presented with an opportunity to work on it. Know that that's a good thing.

3. Stop worrying about being too hard and being perceived as acting like an asshole. You are stretching into a role, a harder persona, and its a balancing act. You're going to have to be willing to look like an asshole so you can draw yourself back down into the balance of where you actually need to be. People will let you know, verbally or otherwise, when you're acting like an asshole.

4. When you're acting in theatre you overplay it, when you're acting on film you underplay it. Right now you're in theatre, so overdo it to the point where you think its too much. It will feel silly, but that's not how it looks from the outside. Theatrical directors are always yelling at their actors, "Give me more! Give me more!". You need to give them more.

My friend is smart and I feel better. Hurray!

A Time For All Things

2009-02-07T13:55:00.002-06:00

And now is the time to bitch. Ahem:

Too weak
Too quiet
Too feminine
Not dynamic
Not commanding
More movement
More footwork
Harder strikes
Better conditioning

Dammit. What is my problem? Today was very frustrating. I'd do a demonstration or teach a technique and even I would think, 'what the hell was that'? Everybody has bad days, but I can't afford to have bad days right now!
AAUURRGGHH!!!

Boxing Day

2009-02-04T16:05:00.004-06:00

Ooh, I finally sparred Miss M last night! I'm scared of her. Turned out she's an excellent sport & didn't try to disembowel me after all. We were both pretty defensive, I think we'll mix it up more next time. Also, I bopped her on her injured nose a couple of times on accident - I'm not experienced enough to strike precisely with those big boxer's gloves on, I just see an open face & punch it. So it looks like she's going to get a headgear with a mask on the front to protect her nose, which means I'm meat. My experience so far has been that once your sparring partner knows they can't take a hard one in the face they get veeery aggressive. We'll see if I live to tell the tale.

Afterward we both sparred with the Gentleman, and its like sparring a spring loaded rocket. He's everywhere. I was gassing out & sweating like a hog in the summer sunshine. He's a great teacher & I can't wait to do it again.

Turns out the Gorgeous Bastard is pretty smart. He said keep my chin tightly down, so if a punch to the face gets past my defenses it'll mostly just hit me on the forehead. Well, he was right! I got bopped a few times on the forehead & it didn't hurt so I picked up my face to say, "Hey, it works!" and POW took one right on the nose. Sweet.

2009-01-31T13:58:00.002-06:00

Well, I was warned. Once you start teaching, it gets harder to train, because the class you'd be training in, you're teaching. Time to start hitting the gym harder & doing conditioning work more faithfully on my own time. Can't be fat & gassing out in front of the class!

Level 1, assisted Relentless in a hyooooge class. Lots of new people right now. I was watching one student, Mr. E, who has come so far in the last few months. You watch someone make the same mistakes over & over for a long time, trying and failing to correct them, and then BOOM they've just got it. He's gone from working very defensively for so long, to being a little aggressive one man army. Its very gratifying, and helps my attitude toward my own weaknesses, that if I just keep plugging along the pieces will fall into place.

2nd hour I intended to train in the Gorgeous Bastard's level 2/3 class, but Relentless asked me to help out with the Intro class instead. Turned out he was busy, so I assisted the Gentleman the whole time, & taught several techniques as well. I think I'm coming along well in my teacher training, but its evident I still have a long way to go. The Gentleman has had his own class for a while, & knows which extra points to hit and when. After demonstrating & explaining a technique I start to flounder a bit, so that's the next area for me to focus on, while continuing to improve on everything else. I'm really glad I did this class, since its the longest I've been in front of a group, but now I'm itching badly for a workout.

Went out to lunch with Spike and the Gentleman afterward, yummy Mexican. The food, I mean, not just the company. I'm so proud of Spike! He's going to officer training for the Marines & I just know he's going to do so well. With men like Spike serving in the Corps, its got to be unstoppable. Its very exciting!

2009-01-29T20:35:00.002-06:00

Started out on my own tonight, working round kicks on the bag. I was in a moody, nasty snit when I got there, but after about 15 kicks I was soooo happy. Just happy. Worked with Relentless for a little while on teaching defense against low punch. Next hour the Dragon was teaching level 1, with me helping & teaching defense against low punch. I did just okay on teaching, still going a little too long! D'oh, dammit! Mighty Mouse taped me teaching, but missed the demonstration & there was no sound, so I just watched my body language & it was good, but I counted the seconds & I talked for too long - 33 seconds. The demonstration was probably another 30 seconds for 2 live demos & 2 slow ones. The Dragon said it was good, but I know it can be better. I think I am more confident now for sure, but I didn't remind myself to be stern, so I may have been too friendly. I caught myself smiling a lot at people as I was walking around making corrections. Sigh. There is a middle ground between sweetie-pie and bitch, and I'm going to find it someday.

2009-01-27T21:55:00.002-06:00

Started with a private with Relentless tonight, tweaking, patching holes, working on adding one more piece to the puzzle.

I've aggravated my old shoulder injury somehow so I'm not actually physically training this week. Instead I helped out The Dragon in level 1 & he was gracious enough to let me teach a technique. Hammerfist this time - I love hammerfists! He told me I should teach something I don't love, but I didn't think I'd have time to review teaching points before class, so I wanted to play it safe. He said it went well, but that I need to shorten it even more. So that's what I'm gonna do.
Toward the end of teaching a technique I sometimes wonder if I was clear enough so I'll revisit a point or two, but they always call me on it, so I must find a way to shut up. My husband has been looking for a way to do this for years, but no luck so far!

I was going to run away & go home after class, but Dr. J caught me & told me her yoga class was going to be particularly good for shoulder rehab tonight, so I stayed & am so glad I did. I just feel good after her class, my body feels loose and strong, its a relaxed friendly atmosphere, so everyone's in a happy mood. A good night.

Back Again

2009-01-25T11:07:00.003-06:00

Sorry I've been away! I was scolded last night for my lack up updates - the truth is I've been getting home later & later from krav because we stay in the lobby yapping forever after class...so, there you go.

Now, yesterday's training was much fun. I got to assist Relentless & taught front kick to a vertical target, which was interesting because I had just finished a fatigue drill & could barely breathe or stand up when he said "come teach this". But it actually went well, so thanks to Relentless for making me do that. Actually, thanks to Relentless for something much more important - After class the other day, the first time I taught a technique in a long time, I was asking Relentless how I'd done & he said it was fine & pointed out that I hadn't giggled at all & that was good.

Then he said it: "You know, Parker, you could - and you will - have a rape victim in your class sometimes. This stuff is deadly serious to her, and if you're up there giggling during a technique, how is that going to make her feel?" I was horrified. I felt like I'd been slapped in the face - but not a mean slap. It was the kind of slap that wakes you up. I've been "working on" being more serious in front of the class and "trying to" do better, but that's over now. Now its just done. If some rape or assault victim is brave enough to facilitate her or his recovery by learning to meet that situation head on, I'm damn sure not going to be the one to make it harder for them. Its funny, I also feel calmer and more confident in front of the class now, too. Strange how just a few little words can make all the difference.

Big Night For Miss Parker

2009-01-20T21:48:00.002-06:00

Yipee! I got to teach tonight! Choke from the front with a push, a technique I really like quite a bit. I score myself a B, talked too much at the end, but up then then I did fine. I was gassing out during class, didn't eat much or drink water much today, but in the end it was also nerves. I want MORE! Also, I didn't giggle or make jokes while I taught, so that's an improvement. Yay!

2nd hour I did bag class instead of my usual yoga class. I think I may switch off every other week. I love yoga - especially the way Dr. J teaches it - but I also need better conditioning. By the end of bag class my punches were slow and heavy, like in a dream when you're trying to fight but your limbs move in slooooow moooootion. So then I skipped MMA & just watched. As I've often done with the Gorgeous Bastard & Mudslide, I mostly studied the Professor's moves. Watching people who are very very good, as these 3 guys are, is very helpful, not so much for the techniques they use, but just the way they use their bodies in general, if that makes sense. Its the fluidity. What weakness in their opponents do they choose to exploit? Look how he's moving his head around so he doesn't get hit - I don't do that! So now I'm working on it. Watching someone on film is good, but live is better, especially when they're patient enough to endure your questions afterward.

One thing for sure, though: boys are stinky!! When class was over they opened the door to come out, but the smell came out first & Relentless said, "Wow! What's the defense for that?!" and started head feinting. The Gentleman bravely took a deep breath and said, "Ah, the smell of sweat and shame..."
Bwahahahaha!

On a different note, I was talking to a girlfriend of mine on the phone tonight who is very successful at her job, but she says she just keeps thinking, "I don't belong here" & its eating at her. Maybe that's why I'm so happy at Fit and Fearless, I walk in the door & feel that I belong here. Its good, its really good.

2009-01-18T19:50:00.004-06:00

Whoops, I messed up my little experiment. Last Saturday I woke up too late to have a big breakfast & bonked a bit by the end of class, so yesterday I woke up nice & early & made a big breakfast to last me through all 3 hours of work. Then I missed my first class. Doing a little project on the computer & once I'm on a project I usually won't stop. Ah, well, it gave me the chance to chat with Mami K & The Gorgeous Bastard for a while. And breakfast was delicious!

So my first class was my usual second class and the Gorgeous Bastard certainly earned his name and we're not talking about appearances here. 360's until the cows came home. OH! My arms are black and swollen. Okay, let's be frank, I had fun. A lot of fun. Working with Spike is always fun. And I learned something. GB says there's no secret to 360's, that they hurt a hell of a lot, and you just have to suck it up. In fact, that's what everyone says. But I gotta say, I decided to concentrate not on my defending arm, which was killing me & therefore making me hold back, but on my punching hand - my counterattack. Focusing on striking took my mind off the pain in my other arm without making the defense weaker, which allowed me to go in harder. So, I'll keep working on that & see how it goes.

Next hour was BJJ with the Professor. New ways to pass the guard. I worked with the Stronggirl & Big Boy Z. Such a difference! Working on the ground with someone your size is a completely different experience than working with a huge ball of muscle & bone like BBZ.
Maybe its just because I'm such a newb? The Professor seems to not have this problem. The Professor seems to have no problem with any person of any size at any time. BJJ is so confusing! Grr, I don't care, I'm just going to keep working & hope that one day it eventually all clicks. Even if it doesn't (& I kind of think it will), I'll still be having a great time. Seems like a good deal to me.

Oh, and I almost forgot: SPIKE RULES!!

2009-01-16T12:02:00.002-06:00

Started out yesterday with a private with Big Daddy J & the Stronggirl. We took turns, I teach the Stronggirl some krav, she teaches me a lift - she's a Crossfit teacher - and the whole time the Gentleman was practicing his handstands over in the corner. Oooh, he's almost there!

Next, on to level 3/4 with Relentless. The rank test scheduled for tomorrow was cancelled because too many of us have let our lower level skills slide - I'm sure I'm one of them, I'm not practicing all my skills all the time. Right now I'm really focusing on levels 1 & 3. I don't know how long it will take until every technique is an automatic reaction, but I know I'm a long way from it. We ended the class with the lights out choking each other. I'm such a cheater. If I don't get attacked very soon after I close my eyes, I just can't take it! I have to peek.
Then my heart rate shoots up because I'm trying & failing to force myself to keep my eyes closed & I'm so jacked up by the time I finally do get attacked that I'm usually giggling uncontrollably like an like a 13 year old at a Jonas Brothers concert. The thing is, its getting worse instead of better! If I know I'm going to be grabbed by the throat & I have to close my eyes its like lightning is shooting all through my body, my breathing escalates, & I get a little panicky. I clearly need to be choked more often.

Last class was MMA, with the Professor. Drill drill drill, endless rounds. A lot of fun, actually, then sparring. You know, once I get going I do okay sparring with either gender, as long as they're around my size. (Relentless excepted. With him I'd be dead before I knew I'd been touched.) But once I get with the really large men, I'm toast. They get those big hairy arms right past my defenses like soup through a sieve. Most of the large guys will outright refuse to hit me, which is fine, but the fact that they're getting past me is sobering. If I ever get attacked I hope its by a little tiny masochistic guy on sedatives. Then I'm golden.

2009-01-13T22:20:00.002-06:00

Dangerous, demonic, daring, Doomsday Daniel tried to kill me with his warmup today. He's a cruel master! Loooved class, palm heels, hammerfists, headlock from the side. I love level 1 classes. They are big and they are fun and Daniel is juuuust a little bit scary, which makes it even better.

My sweet friend came to krav today to try out class (we partnered in Daniel's class, and her previous training has served her well) & I taught her stance & movement before class. Mami K was sitting on the other side of the room facing the wall. I didn't know if she was meditating or what, but I should have known she was up to something. What, was I born yesterday? Sheesh. I put my friend through her little lesson & at the end - without even looking at us even once - Mami K shouts across the room, "I'll bet if I walked over there right now I could push her over from the side because you didn't teach her a stable enough stance!" Or whatever the hell she said. So I thought, "No way!" & looked down at my friend's feet. Way!! She was right! Unstable stance. How does she do this mystical black belt Pai Mei stuff? It makes me want to try to trick her just to see if I can get away with it. This same urge earned me many beatings as a child, but some people never learn.

After level 1 I stood outside & talked to Doomsday Daniel for a while, as its been forever since I've had the chance to do so, & then went late into yoga. I considered skipping, but Dr. J is a good sport & I wanted in. We did a really cool move where you do a full backbend with your hands & face right up against the wall & then walk yourself upright by walking your hands up the wall. I didn't think I could do it, but Dr. J makes you believe you can do things that seem out of reach, and I did it!

Afterward, I stayed in the lobby & chatted for a long time & made an agreement that seals my doom. Miss M has been after me forever to spar, so I agreed that we would do so this Thursday. Hopefully I will be attacked by a hungry leopard before then, as I have more chance of surviving such an encounter as sparring with her. Goodbye, everyone!

Comeuppance

2009-01-10T18:52:00.000-06:00

It's just like my dear old daddy used to say. "Sweet Parker," he'd say, "payback's a bitch."

So, yesterday I was naughty at the grocery store & snuck up on Mighty Mouse from behind. Today I'm in class fighting over a gun with the Goddess of War & we bump into Mighty Mouse doing the same with her partner, and what nobody but me realizes is I'm getting hammered in the forehead over & over & over with Mighty Mouse's gun as we slam into each other. I now have a nice visible lump on my forehead and a new regard for karma. As well as a fear of mice.