Day 10 - Leg Submissions

Last night was the first night of Ninja Training that I was going in with my new Ninja Philosophy - Think Defense. Now, this is a pretty serious change in way of thinking for me, as I've always figured that if you have a strong enough offense, you won't really need much defense. Which is why I'm a fan of Arsenal Soccer and think Mike Leach is a great college coach despite a gimmicky offense. But I was determined to change my way of thinking for the sake of personal betterment (and not getting my ass kicked anymore).

Before we could get to the sparring though, Ninja Instructor told us that the next couple of days would be focused on leg submissions -- 40% of the submissions that we would ever learn. To be honest, this kinda went against my new philosophy, but being as open-minded as I am, I decided I was going to pay attention anyway. Ok, so that might not be the complete truth -- it was either learn the leg submissions or go home. And I really didn't want to do that. The trick to the leg submissions we were doing last night was to get the ankle in a vice grip thing and put pressure on the Achilles Tendon. If you do it right, it doesn't take much work for that position to really start to suck for the other guy. If you do it wrong, it takes quite a bit more work and can actually end up sucking worse if you do serious damage to the tendon. Nothing terribly difficult, but like I said -- not the most practical for what I'm trying to do right now unless my opponent is just terrible and pisses me off.

After being all ready for like 4 rounds of sparring, it turns out that we only had time for 1 round. I think it is because are classes are starting to get really full, so practicing each technique is taking longer because the instructors have more people to talk to. On the plus side, I am no longer the FNG. On the down side, there isn't as much room to maneuver. On another plus side, the kids that don't know what they're doing can get themselves into some pretty awkward positions (I have been that kid on more than one occasion). So I was feeling a little too big for my Ninja Britches last night and was going to pick the biggest, baddest Ninja Student to spar against. Good thing that Ninja Student wanted nothing to do with me, and instead I went up against somebody about my own size and rank (he even was wearing the same outfit as me!) So he will from now on be known as Ninja Twin. The thought had crossed my mind to warn Ninja Twin that I was going to just focus on defense, but I didn't want to overplay my round. Before the round started, I was pumped... ready to give this new stuff a try. Time started and I immediately realized that defense is just as tough, if not tougher than offense. In other words, I got real tired real quickly. But the techniques were successful. Ninja Twin wasn't able to tap me out.

Here's the thing about being a white belt who is only on defense -- I don't know enough to know what the other guy is trying to do. I do know enough to know that I don't want him to be able to do any of it. So no matter what the opponent is trying to do, I'm fighting him the entire way. But when your opponent is a white belt too, he doesn't know what he's trying to do any more than I know why I'm trying to prevent it. So I'm burning through energy even quicker than I might with a higher ranking opponent. As always, I'll keep you up to date...