Ready

Tomorrow is the big day! 

BJJ class last night, 1.5hrs.  Everyone was excited about my tournament and had tips for me.  Was great to have that vibe and that tream feeling. 

Did positional drills from the mount.  Maintaining with grapevine or switching to side-mount and collar chokes from the top.  Trap-n-roll, knee/elbow escape and defending chokes from the bottom. Learned a great escape when someone goes for a collar choke.  Gable grip your hands on top of theirs, push your elbows into their arms, bridge and roll.  So awesome.  Good finish as you end up in guard is to bridge forward (into them) hard.  If they maintained the collar grip through your escape, this should break it relatively easy.  Just b/c you escaped doesn't mean you're out of danger if they maintain their collar grip (especially if they have both hands in).

Gary showed us a few new things and did some takedowns with me at the end.  Ian gave me some takedown tips which was really nice of him.  :)   Basically, stay low, keep your head up.  If they come in under you for a single or double, push their head down, sprawl back (create space between you and them) and block their shoulders from coming into your space.  I think the gist of it is if you let their shoulders get past your hips your defense didn't work well enough.  If you do have a good sprawl, take their back with big, quick steps.  Don't take a bunch of baby steps to get around...one step to get perpendicular to them, one step to get the first hook in, one step to get the second hook in.

I didn't want to try to learn anything new to use for the tournament...just wanted to drill the basics.  Got a lot of that in, so I'm happy about class last night and looking forward to tomorrow.  My  matches won't start until 12:30 (at the earliest), so don't have to wake up *too* early to make the drive over. 

I've been doing well with my food intake...still no pastries, espresso nor caffeine.  Can't say that my body feels all that different w/o those delicious items, but it does feel pretty good after the week of rest.  Keeping off of that stuff probably kept me from putting on a bunch of extra pounds. Stupid ankle did go hinky during the roll last night though (doing a triangle, of course!)  Won't keep me from competing and won't affect my matches, but I was hoping that it was done being wonky.  It surprises me more than it hurts. Bummed that it comes on during a triangle!

Onward!