Just a quick one tonight. Need to get to bed.
Great day today. Lots of revelations (although, that seems to be par for the course these days. Awesome), the biggest one being that I had fantastic use of energy. I was so efficient and present, I was jumping so high and felt like I could have danced a 3 hour ballet. During the class, I feel like I used structure over strength 95% of the time.
Over the last several days, I’ve been identifying what are difficulties for me when working pressa. The most troublesome has been base, but with some diligent observation and discovering a process, I’ve been able to make great strides in that area. Not solved, but learning is good! This was so successful, I have been making lists for looking at pressa in general. This way when I’m working this stuff at home (Christian, Scotty, Sarah, I’m looking at you!) I have a checklist to help us when things don’t seem to be working. I’m actually very excited about Brad’s “homework” — looking at many of the 600 images and working with them. I think it’s possible now. Before, I had my doubts whether I could make any sense of them.
Something rather fun for me this time around was finally discovering what it was like to do this stuff on someone my own size! So often I’m fighting people bigger than me, so there are certain leverage issues that don’t come in to play, AND my belly and ankles are rarely used as leverage points. Tall people usually go for my shoulders, knees, thighs and hips. Fighting people my own size or a little smaller, I was suddenly thrown these little curveballs. Not only do different leverage points come in to play against me, but pressa that usually work without effort on other people were really difficult. Pressa 4 is usually no problem, but I had to use slightly different mechanics on a smaller body. I realized that I wasn’t conscious of a certain leverage point that is so easy to get from a smaller person to a larger person. Just goes to show that a variety of fight partners can significantly increase your ability, as it shows you habitual patterns and subtleties that you were previously unaware of.
And Oula, I’m stealing some of your warm-up. That was awesome stuff today, mostly your use of spotting practice and partner work. Loved it!