The Good News: I Haven’t Been Kicked in the Head. Yet.

Posted on 18. May, 2008 by Jeremy in Press On, Sharpening, Writing

The second day of MMA training went much better. I’m not nearly as sore as I was after the first day, and since I knew what to expect I didn’t have the tension that wore me out so quickly last time.

After warming up with jogging, air squats, leg lifts, jumping rope, and shoots & sprawls, we started with some boxing combinations. Jabs (1), crosses (2), and lead hooks (3) with footwork, doing combos of 1-1-2-3-2 ( so jab, jab, cross, hook, cross). It can get pretty tiring, especially in the shoulders, to keep my hands up while punching then holding the mitts up for my partner to throw his punches. There was a lot of “shaking it out.”

I got some great pointers on keeping my punches solid and smooth without flailing around and getting off balance. Form and technique first, then speed. Power comes later.

We did three rounds of 6-minute sparring sessions with 2 minutes rest in between. The stand-up was a lot of fun and increased my respect for fighters who stand in the pocket. It’s unsettling to be within range of punches, kicks, knees and elbows, even at half speed.

When it went to the ground I managed to get an Americana (raise your hand like you’re getting sworn in and tilt your hand back and push your elbow forward, putting torque on the shoulder), a quasi-Anaconda Choke without the gator roll (I tried it once with the roll and failed miserably). I tapped out to an armbar and was close to getting submitted via Americana myself, but my partner wasn’t very familiar with it so we went through the steps until the round was over.

It was another great session, and it’s already informed the writing for book two of the Woodshed Wallace series. I’m very happy that the class won’t leave me too sore to type, which would kind of defeat the purpose.

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Tags: Americana, Anaconda Choke, Armbar, BJJ, Jeremy Brown, MMA, Woodshed Wallace

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Mightier Than the Sword

"In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor -- by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things. He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks -- that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. The story is the man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in. "

— Raymond Chandler

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