Adductor Blues

10/2 

I'm not sure how, but I managed to pull an adductor doing...I have no idea what. At some point during the pre-class warm-up, my R adductor starting feeling tight and unhappy. I got through the warm-ups ok and tried to give it a little extra time during the butterfly stretch. Felt a little better, and had no problem during the technique portion of class. I was conscious of it while rolling, though it didn't seem to hamper me much. I'm glad it wasn't a groin pull, as those seem to take much longer to heal once they've been tweaked.

We had a couple of newbies in today, Joe and Rachel. I think Joe had background in a different martial art, and Rachel has done at least a year or so of no gi. We've had quite a few new people lately, so it'll be interesting to see who will stick around.

We worked on butterfly positioning, specifically when your opponent is in tight with low posture. Did a sweep to mount, the Frank Mir (an americana variation), a triangle, and a guillotine. I had the most trouble with the Mir b/c it turns out that Dennis is particularly flexible in those joints. And I was probably doing it a little bit wrong.

Rolled with Dennis, kid-who's-name-I-don't-remember (blue belt), Jason and Rachel. Dennis and I had an ok roll, but not quite the epic experience of Monday. I did well with the kid, mainly b/c he had a very loose game. By "loose" I mean he often only had two contact points when he was playing open guard, didn't stay tight when he was on top, etc. I thought I'd try something different with Jason today, but I didn't really accomplish that. I focused a bit more on grips, but again, when he gets his contact points in open guard it's crazy hard to break. I tried to backstep at one point without controlling his knee almost ended up with him in back-mount. Had a good roll with Rachel. I was able to dictate the pace and positioning, and after getting to mount a couple of times I let her reverse into top half so I could see what her top game was like. Her shoulder pressure was good, and she was able to maintain top position fairly well. She's about my size too, so it'll be nice if she sticks around and really gets into the gi side of BJJ.