Kent Racquetball

So played four 15 minute games with Katherine at Kent. It was a lot of fun, she's starting to pick up good serves, serving to the dreaded, backhand "dead zone" corner. She still needs to put some more power, but what she lacks in power, she makes it up in accuracy and finesse.

I still got good power and my racquetball game is improving. This game I basically served from the left side of the court to the right back side, trying to perfect my right side crack serve. When it hits the crack the ball simply becomes dead... That is when it hits, and it's pretty nasty. I was trying to get speed/accuracy down and it was good to practice with Katherine. I have to watch my efforts to kill the ball, where it comes up short, and instead killing the ball, you end up losing a point. It's probably better to try to hit the ball to the back wall, keeping in mind your opponents position. I have better success with passes and positional shots rather than kill shots.

Overall a great game.

Pizza, Happy Hour, et al...

Um, as I'm typing this, I just ate a whole pizza. Yep one of those frozen pizzas that you put in an oven. What else? It was delicious. I assume that the whole serving size is one pizza. Ya. I was hungry.

So, what's been going on. I was bouncing between 203.5 and 209 lbs. this week, depending on the condition of my body, and how much water (or not it has). Considering I'm hovering at 209 lbs. right now and weigh-ins are tomorrow morning, it's a good thing. I'd get to 198 lbs. eventually, but this weekend is not it. Besides 198-220 lbs is a huge weight class, and I believe tomorrow's tournament is Light/Medium/Heavy tournament so weight classes in general is a guide. A lot of people I know bounce between 90kg-100kg weight class.

This week has been a blur... To recap.

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Tuesday afternoon

Muay Thai with Jen. Apparently Jen took Muay Thai for eight years, and has lots of private lessons, at one point she was actually instructing classes for a couple of years. She has been my regular running partner. Right now, I do need to run, although we did talk about other interests, and the subject came up about boxing/muay/thai/martial arts. So she came by, we did combos. I don't have the fancy timers at the gym, so we just turned it to the music channel and "ended" rounds at the end of the song. Fair enough. We worked out for about 45 min-1 hour. It was a good workout with lots of sweat. Oh. Since it was a rainy afternoon (big surprise in Seattle) we ended doing practice in the living room, which, upon discovery is not pleasant for my room-mate who happens to sleep at odd hours of the day. (Her bedroom is underneath the living room).
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Wednesday afternoon.

I got a lunch hour session with Katherine for racquetball. We played 3 good games. Her game is picking up. Nice way to relax for an hour.

Boxing with Amy and the SPD crew. We worked on combos and mitt work. Did 3-3 minute rounds per combination swapping mitts/gloves/partners. Did 3 rotations of 3-3 minute rounds so, total of 9 3 minute rounds? Hmmn. That's a long time. Anyways, I was tired.

Immediately after, I jumped into my truck and headed to Seatown Sombo. I got there just in time for stretches. It was the usual.. warm ups, rolls, and then uchikomis. The technique of the night was a knee bar from the turtle position. It was good, I need to practice it more. Then we just did light positional newaza and some more standing randori. There were about a dozen or so people that night, and just simply a bit crowded, so just have to watch where you throw people. Ground work was fun, although we didn't have the clock running, we must have done about 20-30 minutes uchikomis, 20-30 minutes of ground fighting and 10-15 minutes of standing. I don't remember much, the night went on like a blur.

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Thursday

A quick 2-3 mile hike on Cold Creek Trail. Nothing special.

Thursday Night Practice was this:

Standard Warm-ups (I was tasked to lead this). Uchikomis. Technique of the Night. 30 minutes of newaza randori, 30 minutes standing randori.

Technique of the night was: Sankaku on a turtled opponent. Apparently I have problems getting my foot into the crook of my knee. It was good. My left ear has been jammed again. It was hurting from Tuesday night's sankaku practice. (Sankaku is triangle choke with your legs). I don't think I've got cauliflower ear just yet, it's just tender. Oh well. It's part of training. I think most everyone in the dojo has some form of cauliflower ear. No biggy.

Gary and Leo gave me pointers on the tournament. Basically it came down to this: Commit to your technique. Throw like you mean it. Better to attack and be on the offensive. Whatever happens, win or lose, learn something from it and improve upon it. Oh and work on 1-2 techniques (your main staple) for a year and perfect it for competition. And all it takes to be a winner is hard work and practice. There is no magic bullet...

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Friday:

I bagged a workout with Jen. I was tired, the thought of punching mitts and doing combos was tiring, and the fact that I needed to be rested for Saturday's tournament.

I then did Happy Hour at Grey's with Mike/Robbin & Co. It was a fun happy hour, but had to excuse myself early as I had a racquetball appointment with Katherine. It was a good game of racquetball. Being a bit tired and sore, I ended up playing more strategically and not really moving as much... Being tired ummmm.. improved my game.

Anyways, it's late. I had to write down what I did this weekend before I forget. It's going to be a fun weekend. Tournament tomorrow and the Travis Stevens Clinic on Sunday.

I'm just going to take it easy and have fun.

Start of the Wet Season...

Well it's the onset of the Seattle Wet Season.

So started it off with some indoor sports on Friday and capped it off with a morning paddle on Saturday.

Played racquetball for 1 1/2 hours yesterday. It was a lot of fun.

Paddled for an hour this morning. It was wet. Cold. Thank goodness I was wearing my spray suit.

Packing for a trip to Glacier Basin.

Uggh.

It's cold, wet and rainy.

Racqueteball!

I haven't played racquetball in about a year. Booked a reservation at Bally's in Renton. Played with Katherine who is a 3.5 in tennis. She hasn't really played racquetball all that much.

We had some awesome rallies. Final Score was 2 games to 1. She picked up the pace rather quickly. We played for about an hour and a half and it was great! I just started remembering my different serves. The Z-Shots. The kill shots. The Corner Shots. The Lobs. And the dreaded left back corner serve. She had some cool ace serves to the left back corner. And her forte' was the drop shot to the front wall. She has a lot of finesse.

My right knee was still bothering me, but it was fine. I wasn't running as much and it really forced me to think tactically, my court position, and pure efficiency. I'd just hate to run for the sake of running you know?

Overall it was a lot of fun.

Then my friend Amy invited me to come to her boxing class at the SPD Training Facility. It was a super nice facility with a nice rubber surface for the striking portion. Not too grippy, but has enough give for different striking techniques. Various training bags. Heavy Bags and Muay Thai Bags. They have a few training dummies and a Wing Chung wooden trainer. They have a cool competition mat area for grappling with brand new zebra mats.

The class was rather informal and it was very chill. We did some basic warm-ups. And then we started with footwork drills. We moved onto basic jabs and crosses. Then added a few more strikes/blocks/fades and step asides. We then did a muay thai clinch with knee strikes and a push with a punch/side kick combo. It was a lot of fun. It was pads, and we did about a total of 12 3-minute rounds with each round alternating pads/gloves. I really think my judo/jujutsu randori has helped me in my stamina as I wasn't really gassed during the punching part of the drill, or perhaps Amy was taking it easy on me. I did end up pushing Amy just a bit as a stream of expletives came out of her mouth as I kept on flashing a jab, then a jab/cross combo over and over again. It was an overall fun workout, that was a lot of fun. At the end of class we did some conditioning, mainly sit-ups. 50 crunches, and 25 left/right elbow knee crunches. My left ribcage still hurt from Monday, so I couldn't really get my left elbow to my right knee. We then did hold your partner's ankles and lift you legs up to touch the hands drill. And the hands were positioned that not only you lifted your legs, but you had to lift your hips off the deck. We did 20 of these.

It was a lot of fun. I had a great time, and I do miss my boxing/muay thai workouts. I'd have to get back into it. It's just that I don't have a lot of time, and hopefully this Wednesday workout with Amy becomes a regular thing.

So then my right knee was starting to really bother me, after I removed the tape after class. Taped up it was fine. Without it, it just didn't have the support. I just have to lay low on it. And going to the doctor will just mean, getting it looked at and then recommending ice and motrin. If it bothers me next week, then that's another story.

So, with that. I stopped by a store to pick up some water and head over to Seattle Jujutsu to watch the class. My knee was still bothering me. I went over there to watch. There were 2 new faces in class. And the familiar ones. Ah the technique of the night was working on hizagatame. Some more technical pointers, such as the feet on the scapula works better than knee on hip. One of the things I noticed was the rolling of the hips to apply pressure, rather than just closing your knees. Also cupping the elbow with your hand helps to locate the elbow and apply pressure on it.

The rest of the night was spent in randori. I just watched some sweeps, reversals, shrimps, and the normal randori stuff. It was good to watch a bit as I noticed how people moved to try to keep a steady base. A common theme seems to be control of the hips. If you control the hips either from the guard or in the guard, you can either pass the guard or have control the person in your guard. Hmmn, just an observation.

Anyways, it was an overall fun day. Although I do need to take some more motrin for my knee. My knee is just throbbing. Cool thing is that I no longer feel pain in my left ribs, either that or my knee pain eclipses my rib pain. I do sometimes feel some pain in my right shoulder due to the upper bicep tendon tenderness. I think I just need to soak in a hot tub for awhile.