Jiu Jitsu

Today I took my Gi with me to work, carried it around with me all day in the boot of my car. At 5pm I made my way over to where the Jiu Jitsu class was last week. On arriving I found that instead of the smaller 10 people training there was more like 40.

I enjoyed the class, I had too much to think about to really keep a great body being - or at least that's the excuse that I'm letting be there. It was cool though, a chance to practice rolling and breakfalls, I know mine need a whole lot of work. We also did a couple of throw on both sides, an O Goshi and another very similar one. I enjoyed the throws alot, enjoyed being thrown and trying to create an attitude of offering and allowing myself to be thrown, and then popping back up as quick as I could.

We also did some kind of arm trap things, I didn't catch what they called them, kind of he punches you block and turn his arm around and help him towards the ground. These were a lot of fun, using "Ba sic bo" (I probably spelled that wrong) footwork and leading to help them down. Then we did a kind of a block turn and allow to fall thing, this was fun too.

It's always nice to find a bunch of people happy to throw you around and happy to let you do some stuff to them, I spoke to a couple of people about my background too and suggested they google Cheng Hsin, it's too hard to try to describe what it is.

The main things I observed about myself tonight:

• I'm still getting afraid before being thrown
• I'm still too upright and not just allowing gravity to take me down
• Things go much better when I smile and create an attitude of welcoming the whole event, the whole experience of being there, rather than 'trying' to 'learn' or 'judge'.

More cool stuff to work on.