Had some training going on this weekend. Albert and I booked a private with Makoto on Friday, and then Albert put together a training session nearby on Sunday. At both we essentially worked on the same thing, which was lobad/pummeling in grappling range. Friday was a bit more in depth, so I'll describe what we did there.

We started with just the lobad stuff... This is what wrestlers do to get close enough to throw or lock someone. It's kind of like swimming through punches. We added manipulations via clothing. If this were another art, I suppose it would be gi techniques, but we don't actually wear those, so it was T-shirt stuff. Grabbing an opponent's sleeve or collar can give you a ton of advantages. For example, you can actually choke a person out with their own collar.

At this point, we focused on using footwork to both stay safe and to get into good attacking position. It's very easy when pummeling to just focus on what the arms are doing, but what the feet are doing is actually more important. As it stands, most students of Makoto are pretty good at this, but there's always room for improvement. Most techniques can be shut down with proper zoning. It's kind of the best defense we've got.

After the footwork, Albert and I put on some gloves and did a bit of touch sparring within the lobad context. This was fun. I feel like I have some good skills in that range.

Now that we were striking in there, we played with a couple of techniques. The first was to replace any reference we got with another reference. Basically, if you get a hand on their arm, replace it with the other hand. It seems a bit silly, but it's rather useful for opening up opportunities for strikes in stuff. Similarly, we fiddled around with missing on purpose to illicit a reaction to capitalize on. This was some high level shit, and it totally works.

For Sunday's session, we stopped short of getting gloves on, since it was more of a level 1 session and we had a lot less time.

Apparently, my pummeling game is pretty good. It's pretty much chi sao, just a bit closer and more prone to going into collar and elbow. I've found that I know a lot of neat stuff from collar and elbow position. If you push the arm on your neck up at the elbow you can step in with a uranage position (Rock Bottom) and get an osoto gari. If you can get the arm down and around under your arm on their neck, you can get their back and you already have a rear naked choke. Also, while in collar and elbow, move the neck reference to the other side (punch and miss, basically), and throw a knee. They likely won't notice you snaking their arm to get inside, at which point, you have a puter kepala. Nifty.

I'm digging my ebb and flow and I feel like I'm getting a lot of my moves back. I'm feeling like I've got the water attributes down a lot better than I have for a while. I'm not back to my peak just yet, but I can at least see a bit of it in there. I honestly think it's due to a difference in training partners. Albert and I have always kind of been on the same page, and recognize that training isn't about winning and kicking the crap out of one another. There's the opportunity to learn when you're not spending all your time worried that the punches your drill partner are throwing will knock your teeth out if you let them land.

That said, in these drills, shots were landing, and some of them were landing hard. These were mostly landed inadvertently. Basically, with good structure you can beat someone up by accident. Because of the fun of the drill, we had a tendency to speed up and run at full energy, but we were very careful to slow things down if they got too crazy. It was a lot cooler than having to tell a guy to stop trying to punch me in the throat.

On the Friday, we got to see Makoto's new place. It's not quite ready yet, but when it is, it's going to be pretty awesome. It's a storefront in an area with an active community, so I get the feeling things are going to be pretty high profile from now on. Lots of opportunities for demos and such, particularly with summer coming up. Things may get a little busy on the JKD front in the next little while.

Hit class again last night. I may still be wired on adrenaline, so I may go on at length. We worked on clinch range dirty boxing.

Dirty boxing involves getting in close and tying up the opponent's arms, throwing elbows, shoulder strikes, and headbutts... Things you're technically not allowed to do in boxing but everyone in boxing does anyway... They just don't get caught. If you're fighting someone who knows a thing or two about dirty boxing, then going into the clinch is pretty much the exact opposite of taking a rest... You basically get the shit kicked out of you.

We weren't throwing elbows last night, and we were making an effort to not throw headbutts, although that's difficult. Incidental contact happens. If you're used to stand up, "boxing range" fighting, it's a bit more difficult to be defensive for a few reasons. First of all, you can't really see what's coming. Everything is chaotic enough in there that you just have to try and be random and spiky. Second, zoning is a bit more difficult. It's harder to just move out of the way of a punch when the other guy is stuck on you.

We started just trying to land punches, going nice and slow. As it turned out, I ended up doing stuff that Makoto added in for the second round of drills, which is to try and tie up the arms while keeping yourself free to move. This can be challenging, but there are a couple of tricks. Arm drags are incredibly handy for zoning purposes. Get a hold of an arm above the elbow and move it across center so that you're now on the outside. Their free arm is all the way on the other side of their body, so they have more difficulty hitting back or defending.

EDIT: Just realized that you can go from an arm drag directly into a throw in the other direction. Gotta try this at some point. /EDIT

Along the same lines, if you're clinched up, and you underhook their left with your right and reach across and grab their right above the elbow, you now have both their arms trapped while you're only committing one arm, freeing you up to punch with the other. I like to do a ton of this stuff in that range as a result of my past wrestling knowledge.

The third step was to add attacks to the arms as well as the body and head. It's just sort of the type of thing we do. Destroy the weapons so they can't attack.

Finally, we busted out the double sticks and did some drills... Free form stuff... Siniwali, hubad, pak sao cycle, sombrada... Whatever we felt like. At some points, we'd just sort of flow between the drills without planning to... Just kind of flowing and, well, having an awesome time.

My endurance is obviously still horrible. Makoto told me right at the beginning to pace myself and if I wanted to, sit out every other round to catch my breath. I took him up on that offer because I needed it. The relaxation breakthrough I had months ago has gone away, and I'm a bit tense in there again. So that's tiring me out... I managed to overcome that crap before, so I'm sure I can do it again.

Had a neat point where Makoto noticed I wan't taking advantage of a certain position, and told me to think about the moments where I can go from striking to dumog. He pointed out that if an opponent has your arm, technically you also have his... And you can just use structure and movement to take advantage of that. So, while Mike and I were doing some rounds, I found myself tangled up on the inside with one of his arms. I did a quick triangle and turned, holding the arm across my chest. Basically, something similar to a pro-wrestling arm drag. I didn't follow through all the way, but I managed to lift Mike off his feet. Mike's a pretty big guy... But if I had followed through, it's possible I would have put him through a wall. That's some serious shit.

Aside from the lack of endurance, I feel as though I haven't slipped too much. I still seem to have a lot of the skills, although at some points, I'd forget the specifics of a transition or I'd let someone get my back through a stupid mistake. My balance and footwork is still okay, albeit a bit rusty. It's not like I was falling over all over the place... Just not as sure on my feet as I would have liked to have been. I'll have to build my leg muscles back up for that.

I'm moderately sore today, but in many specific places. My hips and my calves hurt from the footwork. My abs and obliques hurt from all the bobbing and weaving. I've got bruises on my arms from where I got hit. Oddly, my shoulders are totally fine... Probably because I was continuing to exercise them through my extended break. That's the nice thing about having taken so much time off... I think it gave my shoulder time to heal properly.

Anyway, it'll take some work to get me back into fighting shape, but it'll happen. I'm considering breaking some bad dietary habits I picked up over the last year or two that should help with losing some fat and improve my mobility. So, yeah, I guess I've got a personal project this summer.