Protect Ya Neck

on January 27, 2012

Rodrigo Cabral’s jiu-jitsu is so deep that even his t-shirts impart deep nuggets of wisdom onto my defense-less tabula rasa. I remember the t-shirt he wore on my first class: it read “PROTECT YA NECK” in big yellow letters. “Ha, I get it!” I said to myself on that day, but I’m not sure I that really appreciated the mantra it was trying to inculcate me with.

I got a little bit closer to learning that lesson today, though, when I fell to not one but two Ezekiel chokes and a guillotine (yes, again, dammit) within the span of three minutes. Granted, after the first Ezekiel I tried to do some fancier stuff like De la Riva guards (read: outside of my league), but that doesn’t change the fact that I fell for the same move twice in a row. The sad part is that I didn’t even know what my opponent was doing, just that it really freakin’ hurt my neck. She showed me at the end though and even explained the counter, so that was nice.

But while I was locked deep inside that last guillotine, I had an epiphany: I’m not protecting my neck because I don’t know how to attack the neck! I keep going for armbars and kimuras (the former have been extremely effective), but perhaps the choke is where it’s at? Thus, I go forwards today with a new idea for next time: “to protect the neck, you must learn to attack the neck.” Those are the kinds of t-shirts that only I would wear.