After much consideration, I've decided that I'm most definitely not a fan of "King of the Hill," which we often close out the Wednesday night class with. Why? Well, because I seem to be the only white belt in that class right now, which means that I last about 5-10 seconds before some blue, purple or brown belt flips me onto my head and boots me to the back of the line. Again and again.

Aside from the normally pitiful finish to the night, Wednesdays are still among my favorites. Last week, I ended up doing a warmup roll with Spike which, considering he's the biggest guy at the gym, was not so much a "warmup" as a OMG, can't breathe, so tired...wait, we still have a whole class left?! kind of roll. Afterwards, Carlo brought everyone together to demonstrate the first technique, which involved this complicated flipping and rolling of your partner straight over your face. When we broke to practice the move, Spike came over all motivated and enthusiastic, saying "Okay, let's do it!" I gave him the look - you know, the bitch, u out ur damn mind?! look - and paired up with Liz instead. Spike looked all let down that his warmup buddy had abandoned him, but considering I had enough trouble pulling off the move on Liz, it was indisputably the best decision for us both.

Oh lawdy, I've been reborn! After nearly a month of spiraling into sin, I've had almost a month of good, hard training to balance it out and am once more feeling great and on the road to healthy lifestyle salvation.

I've also been doing a lot more conditioning work lately since, as much as I love grappling and as much as it makes me sweat, the standup stuff kicks your ass into shape like nothing else. Saturday morning kickboxing has become a routine for me now. It's a smaller, more informal class than the weekday sessions but just as intense. Once, when Dom was teaching, I partnered up with a tall, lanky youngster that I've decided to call Kicker. The reason for this is that he decided - I'm still not clear on why - that he did not care to wear shin pads like everyone else, and spent the whole class kicking the same spot on my thigh with his bony shins...quite hard. I didn't want to be one of those whiny partners that bitches and moans about being too rough, but after a while it really started to hurt and I started to get irritated. So I began kicking him extra hard in return. He's a nice kid and we get along just fine, but I have some anger management issues and very low patience levels so I'm guessing we both went home with giant black and blue patches covering our legs that day. In retrospect, I probably could've handled it better, but what's the point of doing MMA if you can't get a little violent sometimes?

Last Monday, class was running into open mat as usual. Christian had me jump in to drill escapes from mount with The Kid and even though I only caught the last 10 minutes, I was able to work up a sweat. When class ended, Brickling came over and seemed oddly determined to roll with me. I'm not sure why...maybe because I finally gave him a nickname here. At any rate, roll we did, for a damn long time. I'm not sure how much he gets out of it though, since he's insanely strong for such a short guy and has a wrestling background. He just kept tapping me out while I swore incessantly, but we had a good time.

Well...not really, but at least I'm moving in the right direction. In the grand scheme of things, I still know nothing. I'm a total newb. And I still spend half the time feeling like WTF am I doing? But the other half of the time, I'm slowly learning in a way that's becoming more noticeable to me on an individual level. I think I'm more aware of my own improvements now instead of only recognizing the flaws (and believe me, those are endless). People are also challenging me more now and adjusting their game, which I'm assuming is a good sign. At one point, I rolled with Isley after class and tapped him out in about 30 seconds by way of RNC. He got up, looked around, said "Jesus, I hope no one saw that" and then went extra hard on me afterwards. I was pretty thrilled.

After four straight days of intensive training, my body desperately needed a break so I skipped Friday's open mat and went for an low key wrestling class on Saturday. Rolled with Dom afterwards and got it on camera, which I later watched a whole bunch of times to see where I'm going wrong. Looking at it, there are so many bad decisions going on and there are an equal number of things that I should be doing but am not thinking about in the moment. So it's good to reflect on my many incompetencies with a visual aid. Also, the 15 - 20 lbs I still need to lose? Yep, that really needs to go. Like, asap.

Monday was intense. Did a warmup roll with Thumper, who pulled some awesome sweeps on me, then paired up with him for takedowns. Later, we drilled by hand fighting round robin style. Went with Thumper first, then Curly, Lostboy and Schizo, who I didn't have much luck with but then again, he's been wrestling for a long time so it's understandable that he'd be good at, like...wrestling. Near the end of class, I switched to Lostboy for upside down D'arce chokes, which I did quite well with although he struggled a bit and did more neck cranking than anything else.

I've been training nonstop lately and am feeling so good, physically and mentally. We spent Monday working on knee-on-belly transitions (having trouble with those...not quite acrobatic enough yet) and kneebars, which I enjoyed. The guy I paired up with was big, which doesn't usually bother me except that some of the moves required sitting on the other person's stomach or chest, full weight, and it really fucking hurt. So towards the end of class, we split up and he worked in with another pair of big dudes while I joined Frodo and Yanitza. I think it was far more beneficial to both of us that way. Stayed for open mat and rolled with everyone, including Ironman, who did the usual leaning back casually with his head in his hands and kicking me across the mat every time I tried to pass his guard. At one point, I did pass and even got to mount. Unfortunately, I was so proud of myself that I completely forgot what to do from there and he eventually just sat up and threw me off again. Dammit.

The holidays are upon us! And in the midst of shopping for gifts and spending time with family, I'm wondering how it all affects my gym schedule. Clearly, I've got a handle on my priorities...

More newbies showed up last Thursday and I ended up with one of them. The focus was wrestling, so we pummeled and yanked each other back and forth for a while. The poor guy and his friend seemed so amazingly lost, it's funny to think that I had that same OMG WTF? HELP! expression only 2.5 months ago, and now feel like I've been there forever. I think they were a little unsure of the whole grappling girl thing at first but I was in a helpful mood so I kept yanking their arms tighter and talking them through the moves until they figured out that I was not, in fact, going to sue them if they went for a harness grip.

I stayed for gi class afterwards and Yanitza had fun practicing all sorts of painful moves on me in preparation for her first competition. I eventually got tired and meandered around with my cell phone, taking pictures and getting some great shots of Yanitza and Curly after she challenged him with some freakin' funny smack talk. He very much enjoyed getting her back for that, and C-Bear multitasked as coach, referee and commentator, which made the whole thing even more hilarious. If I had it all on video, it would be a great example of why I love my gym so much.

After much badgering from Liz and Yanitza, I went to the NYC women's open mat at Clockwork BJJ on Sunday and, although I essentially got my ass handed to me by every female grappler in the Tri-State area, including a few very tiny girls who were probably half my weight, I also landed my first genuine, well executed submissions by way of stepover armbar and americana. So I came out of the whole thing feeling quite abused but equally satisfied. Rolling with total strangers at a different venue is a great way to gauge personal progress, and considering I was the least experienced person there by a few months, I'm pretty happy with how I did, even if it was essentially 2 hours of getting knocked around. What else is new? By the way, that's me in the picture...in the back, in blue...about to get swept...yep.

Thursday wasn't nearly as tiring as the previous class but it was very informative. I did a warm-up roll with Archie, who I actually did pretty well against. I almost got his back and nearly subbed him a few times and, since he's also fairly new, it's the first time in a while that I didn't get completely dominated and was actually on the offensive for much of the time. Basically, it was a nice, even roll.

Then, Yanitza joined in for no-gi again and once class got started, I drilled various escapes from mount with her, which was great because that's how people are most often killing me. I know I won't be able to use the escapes on everyone, but at least I have some moves to think about and attempt now instead of just giving up, lying there and waiting to be armbarred. I was actually feeling pretty good by the end and would've joined the gi class but I hadn't washed mine yet. Instead, I spent half an hour in a one-on-one session with Isley, working on a bunch of different takedowns.

I got squashed last night. Like a bug. Annihilated by multiple people over the course of 3 hours. If this keeps up, my ass is going to be in shape much sooner than I thought. I keep trying to tussle with the bigger and/or stronger guys and they just trounce me without trying, every time. I must have a bit of a masochistic streak because I keep coming back for more abuse.

While the kickboxing class was wrapping up, I warmed up by rolling with KGB for 15 minutes. And when I say "warmed up," I mean that I nearly died from exhaustion while he barely worked up a sweat. When we began, he got me into a guillotine or triangle or something in the first 10 seconds. It happened so fast, I literally have no clue what kind of choke it was. All I know is that I attempted a takedown and was suddenly tapping for dear life. 10 seconds. If that's not pathetic, I don't know what is. But we reset, kept going and I just kept on trying (and failing, but that's okay). It was an amazing workout but damn...guys like him, it's like grappling with a brick wall. I don't know enough techniques yet to be effective against someone that much stronger. I kept trying to do an armbar or, hell, anything at all and if you've ever been 147 lbs trying to pull someone's arm down when their arms are, like, 2-3 times the size of yours, and they're pulling in the opposite direction, you know what I'm talking about. I need a hell of a lot more practice to be able to counter the difference in strength even somewhat effectively.