Judo notes

Some random judo notes from Thursday:

• Newaza – had some success sitting my chest on turtled opponents and running around them to take their back, rolling them over; but I need to be more active when I’ve got someone’s back.  Scissor-sweeps are higher percentage for me when I shoot the guard in fast and throw the sweep, rather than letting someone settle happily into my guard.  Had some success with a side-control pin-to-rollover where I reach over and grab the guy’s pantleg.  Something I need to refine.
• Kata guruma – something that had not been in my repertoire til now.  Needs practice.  Was told it’s good to use when broken down into opponent’s shoulder.  Defend against by sprawling the vulnerable leg backward—lets you move around with your chest on your opponent’s back, take back, etc.
• Foot sweep – this particular brand is well-applied when in opposite stances with opponent so that all four feet are aligned in a V.  The idea is to hook uke’s near foot with your own, twist/budge it to loosen its contact with the mat (like you were putting out a cigarette), extend uke’s foot laterally to bring his weight away from his supporting foot, then follow through with the sweep.  These are nuances I was totally unaware of, and great for if you fight in unorthodox stance.

Missing the Sport Aspect

Last night at jiu-jitsu we followed up a lesson on Tuesday involving various standing choke/headlock escapes:

• RNC: Toss uke over your shoulder (“hooks in,” yaddy yadda).
• RNC: Twist towards the gripping arm and throw with osoto.
• RNC: Drop the front knee and roll, using uke’s momentum to open his arm (failing this you can reach up and crank his neck while you’re on the ground).
• Side headlock: push head, lift leg and slam; failing that, push head (digging your fingers into uke’s upper lip or nose if you’re an asshole) and wrap uke into a guillotine.
• Side headlock: bearhug uke so you’re perpindicular; squeeze your knees around his near leg; reach behind him for his belt and in front of him for the crook of his leg; rotate your butt to sit in front of uke’s far leg—you’ll end up rolling. (I liked this one.)

I guess this stuff is kind of fun, but it’s so much lacking in the sport aspect of jiu-jitsu that I was feeling a bit disenfranchised after last class.  I’d much rather have been drilling the basics (e.g., triangle choke, armbar, scissor sweeps, cross-lapel chokes, etc.) instead of these situation-dependent headlock escapes.  That, and I only got to roll *once*, and with a bit of a noob (that was good though, I got to practice not using strength).  Still, jj does hurt my ankle less than judo at the moment, so I can’t complain too much.

One thing I noticed was one of the four-stripe white belts doing an armbar against a fallen uke.  He just threw his shin/knee down into uke’s ribs (kind of “bouncing” off him) while pulling the arm upward.  At the same time he threw the leg over to catch uke’s head.  It just looked really elegant and landed him into a great armlock position (i.e., uke’s back slightly exposed, arm torqued backwards, ready for a quick tap).

datapoint

Did Germans yesterday (benching 10×10) with 40lbs on each side (120 lbs with bar), the heaviest I’ve ever completed Germans with. My pal said he helped a bit with the ninth, but the tenth was all mine. I feel like I’ve reached a new plateau in strength, probably due to focusing on my upper body lately (and omitting cardio). Weighed in at ~76kg this morning.

hlsearch for Emacs

Vim has an option called “hlsearch” that highlights every instance of your most recent search term.  Like this:

Searching for "ground" in a document using Vim.

Emacs has the viper and vimpulse plugins that closely emulate vi/vim keyboard commands, but no hlsearch.  If you’re using viper and a version of Emacs later than 22.0, pasting the following into your .viper will give you this functionality.

(defun viper-flash-search-pattern ()
  (hi-lock-mode 0) (hi-lock-mode 1)
  (hi-lock-set-pattern
     (car viper-search-history) 'hi-green)
)

Unfortunately toggling hi-lock mode (line 2) is destructive if you’re using hi-lock mode for anything in addition to highlighting search terms.  In other words, there’s probably a better way to write this function. To solve the problem of clearing highlighting I’m no longer using, I use this (inefficient) snippet:

(viper-record-kbd-macro "//"
  'vi-state
  [(meta x) h i - l o c k - m o d e (control m)
   (meta x) h i - l o c k - m o d e (control m)]
't)

Unrest

In yesterday’s post I anticipated I’d sleep like a baby, which would’ve been nice since I got up at 05:30 for the gym. That didn’t happen, though.  Even though I was in bed at ~22:30, I was feeling crappy in general and a conversation started up outside my window ~00:00.  Gymming (cable flies, low rows, medicine ball sit-ups, squats, super sevens) suffered accordingly, but I’m happy to report the ankle isn’t bothering me anymore.

Jiu-jitsu was a win.  We covered kesa gatame escapes and transitions, which are familiar to me from judo, but it’s always nice to see a familiar subject under a different light.  These were (1) stuffing your captor before rolling the other way, (2) hipscaping and hooking your captor’s neck with your leg, and (3) stuffing your non-reacting captor flat into the ground.  The only one that’s worked reliably for me in judo are (1) and (2)… (3) just requires too much brute force in practice.  I had to tap once from ankle pain (I was transitioning into butterfly guard and it got stuck, heh) but otherwise it actually felt good to test its range of motion.

After JJ I had a few minutes to kill before my bus came so I went to Tim Horton’s to have a turkey sandwich without the dressing.  I was proud of myself for skipping the ranch but then I ordered a medium iced cappuccino but goddam it was good.

Exercise

Satisfying run at the gym this morning:

• Chin-ups, 2×10.
• Germans (9×10 at ~110lbs+1×10 at ~140lbs)—my best to date.
• Obliques with 25lbs plate.
• Shoulder raises with a horizontal bar attached to two cables.
• More chin-ups (2×10).
• One-armed triceps extensions.

Then I went climbing with my friend Lonn at 12:30 (after a bit o’ hack), but we didn’t get a lot in because I had to go to class. Tonight I’m planning on going to jiu jitsu—I’ll sleep like a baby tonight.

Brute

Last night I played some nethack and finally killed Medusa—first time for me.  I have yet to embark on the Rogue quest (scared of the polymorph traps) but my character has become a serious brute.  One day I’ll write a blog post about nethack.

I slept in this morning, and it felt great.  I tried to have some oatmeal for breakfast with cardamom and cinnamon and sugar in it, but I think I overdid it with the spices and it tasted horrible.  Then I went to the gym, even though yesterday’s workout was horrible (I’ve been sick).  Today’s wasn’t great but I had a little more pep:

• Chin-ups, 10 wide-grip then 10 wide-grip/behind-head.
• Bench, 30, 10, 15, 10, 10 reps with 95lbs.
• Some cycling to break things up (13 mins and 83 calories—pathetic!)
• Squats, 3×10 with 95lbs (testing the ankle).
• Triceps extensions, 5×10 variable weight.
• Concentration curls, 3×10 on each arm, 20 lbs.
• 200 crunches (various).

My ankle is mostly recovered.  I can’t fully extend my foot (e.g., sit in saiza) but I think I’m ready for some judo/jiu-jitsu next week!

Captain’s Log

Woke up at 0530 this morning to meet a good friend for a 0600 workout. I got dressed, heated some water on the stove for my oatmeal and tea, and thieved one of my housemate’s bran muffins. I left the house drinking the tea and stood on the corner where I was going to be picked out, wearing my grey wool cap and my black sweatshirt (it’s starting to get cold). The streets were damp from rain and pitch-black and I couldn’t help but feel happy for the moment.*

• Machine flies/pushups circuit, 4 sets.
• Wide parallel-grip seated rows, 4 sets; maxed at 160lbs.
• Kneeling crunches (what’re these called?), 4 sets.
• Narrow grip incline bench, 4 sets; 25lbs plates.
• Wide-grip chinups/overhead flies circuit, 4 sets; dumbbells were plenty at 15lbs.
• Hamstring curls, 4 sets (this exercise is all I can manage w/ injured ankle).
• Buddy curls.
• Quick abs circuit.

*I’ve been excited for the last three weeks to take this great girl out for Turkish food, but found out yesterday that she hooked up with someone else two weeks ago. At first I felt dissed, but suddenly I’m over it.

Hack’ & ‘Hack

I woke up and scrambled two eggs for breakfast.  I travelled to campus to meet with my friend Lonn, and we played hacky sack for a bit.  By then I was hungry, so we looked for food but all the lineups were too long.  Instead, I bought a granola bar out of a vending machine and we played nethack for *hours*.  I managed to polymorph my dog (via polymorph trap) into a master lich; meanwhile, Lonn found rings of poly-control and polymorph and decided that a master lich was the best thing for him to polymorph into.  I died when an air elemental engulfed and tore my meager 59-hp character to shreds, but Lonn’s is alive and well.  Afterwards, I was so… hungry…

Today my ankle is doing fairly well (hence the hacky sack) but still not completely recovered.  I really want to go back to judo & teh jitz, but not just yet.

Tomorrow I start my Ph.D. studies.  I *still* need to decide on a class to take, but I’m uncertain enough about each of the classes to have to visit each one in turn to make my decision.  I also need to decide on a research topic—my supe is taking several very interesting directions in his research, and experience tells me I’ll benefit by complementing his interests and experience.

Nerd Stories I

In junior high I had a (deserved) reputation as one of those brats who messed around with the school computers.  So when someone stole all of the mouse balls from the computer lab, I was a prime suspect.  The school principal came into the class to scold us…