YAY clinics!

I finally started clinics today!!  I'm FINALLY playing vet instead of sitting on my butt all day, listening to professors and staring at slides.  I've been going through cycles of excitement and nervousness for the past few weeks, but after today I think most of the nerves are gone and I'm just excited to actually be doing stuff.  We had a pretty busy day, not made any easier by walking to the parking lot to find my classmate's car under a gigantic tree branch that was blown down during the freak 30-minute storm/tornado. 

Unfortunately, this means I won't get to train as much.  I didn't get home until almost 8 (although I did spend over half an hour with my classmate of the treed car, taking pictures and such).   Then once I got home, I had to do some research on all the crap I didn't know today.  And we need to be there by 7:30 tomorrow.  On the one hand, I really don't want to give up jiu jitsu.  But I also know that I'm only in school for one more year, and I don't want to spend this year rushing out of the clinic at the end of the day and possibly overlooking something in my rush to get to BJJ class.

I haven't disappeared...

yet.  Clinics don't start until Monday, but even though finals were done two weeks ago, I've still been so swamped I barely made it to jiu jitsu since the Friday finals were over.  We had Open House the weekend after, and then a presentation on Foot and Mouth Disease, and now this contract negotiation project...it seriously never ends, even when you think it does.

I did make it to open mat today (yesterday, really).  Rolled with my boyfriend for a while, which was kind of nice even though he has  70 pounds on me.  I had to goad him into unleashing "The Thunder," which he finally did after much coaxing and prodding.  I'm not sure how many times I have to tell him that it annoys me more when he goes easy on me and hands me submissions, but hopefully he'll get it now.  Worked a little on how to modify a triangle going bad.  Then one of our "family guys" shows up, whose daughters both train.  One of them is competing in May, so I rolled with her for a little while.  I'm so jealous--she's only 11 and she's already really good.  I'm sure she'll do well at the competition, but I gave her a few pointers anyways.  There was a pretty significant size difference, so I did have a little trouble telling if some of the stuff she was doing was because she was so much smaller, or just because she didn't know it.

On the plus side for today, all of us soon-to-be-fourth years got Sombreros and free lunch for our "Scrubbin' In" ceremony.  They even had pinatas stuffed with candy, AND "pin the testicles on the donkey." 

Finally!

I FINALLY got to train as a blue belt on Friday!!!  YAY!!!!  It was the afternoon class, and of course I was late because even though we're finally done with finals, I had to go to a bunch of meetings and barely got out in time.  And then when I got there, I was the odd woman out.  I was so worn out from finals, though, that I didn't mind sitting and watching a bit.  We were working the elevator from half guard, and went over a few variations.  We did the same basic thing on Saturday, too. Starting from bottom half, protect your head with your arm from the crossface, and put one hand on their bicep.  Grab their belt around the back with the other hand.  Have your inside foot trap their leg, unhook your outside leg and use it to shrimp out.  In that space, bring in your foot, keeping the knee to the outside, making a new hook.  Now switch the bicep hand to the knee, unhook the inside leg and use it to shrimp in, bringing your hips under theirs.  Lift the outside (hooked) leg, elevating them.  From there you can continue to take them over for the sweep (catch the other leg with your hand so they don't just lock down half guard again), bring your inside leg outside to take guard, bring that leg outside to sweep them back in the direction you came from, etc.

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Ever since the weather started getting nicer, I've been running at a nearby nature park for my cardio workouts.  It turns out there's going to be a trail race there in the middle of May, and I really want to do it...I just don't know if I can survive seven miles of hills!  It's the Stalk Your Quarry Trail Race, and even though I've been through it all, I don't think I've been able to do more than half at once.  At least it was the hardest half, but that still really pushed me.  I think five weeks should be enough to make it, but we'll see how the training is going closer the race.  My first clinical rotation starts in two weeks, and it's Small Animal Medicine, which I've heard has some pretty intense hours.  If I can't find the energy to train properly, then there's no sense in hurting myself trying to run it.
 

Three more days

Just three more days...three more finals...and then no more finals EVER!!!  

No, seriously.  I am alive--just trying to make it through my last academic semester of vet school, and then I'll be back on the mats by Saturday.  Except it hardly makes me feel better, because once clinical rotations start in about 2 1/2 weeks, I'll be in the clinic so much that I'll hardly have time for jiu jitsu =(  And I wanted to cram in as much as I can now, but of course finals don't help that...and neither did last week's cold.  It would be seriously super awesome if we had a UT BJJ club, because then at least I wouldn't have to make the commute to the academy and I could maybe justify going to a class or two this week. 

Nice push press...

I haven't been to jiu jitsu since my belt test because I've had a cold, so no new techniques (or blue belt beatdowns) to report.  I did, however, manage to make it to the gym for some lifting today.  I woke up feeling better than I had all week, and my muscles were begging for something to do besides sitting.

So I get through my squats and my deadlifts, and I was putting away the weights and about to put the bar back on the pins when, for fun, I decided to push jerk the bar a couple of times.  I was doing it squat-style, when the guy next to me told me I could get better balance on my "push press" if I put one leg back.

Um...thanks?  I told him I was going more for a squat-style jerk, and pretty much left it at that.  I didn't want to be rude when someone was actually being nice in the rawr-man-hulk section of the gym, but at the same time...so many things wrong!  A) I wasn't doing push presses, b) I wasn't trying to do a split jerk, c) it's not like I tilted over or lost balance at any point during my push jerks. 

Don't get me wrong.  I understand completely that I'm a lifting neophyte.  I'm still nervous about lifting by myself without anyone to help keep an eye on my form, so obviously I would appreciate any help in that department.  But at the same time, I obviously need to be able to sift out erroneous information from "helpful" people.  Sometimes, I really wish I was back at CrossFit 516.