Spinal Realignment, Redux

10/9 - Evening

Second double-header of classes this week. The dog is the loser in this scenario, b/c she only got a 20min walk out on the ridge before I left for class. She can go out to the backyard whenever she wants though, so that mitigates my absence somewhat.

We went over similar techniques that we did in the morning, specifically passing half-guard. I paired with Sol again and we worked on putting our spines into terrible misalignment. One of the passes includes you putting your head next to their head and pushing it to the side as you free your leg from their half guard. I heard his neck crack on multiple occasions. I rarely have problems with my neck or back, for which I'm quite grateful.

No KOTH. Hooray. Rolled with Sol, Joey, Julio and James during class and Hustle and Savannah after class. Sol wanted to do a hold-a-move-no-more-than-20sec thing, which kept him pretty active on top. It's good practice for him, at least to mix up his game a little bit and explore. I think he's going to be testing for purple next month along with Hustle, Clayton and Dennis. Maybe Manny too. Julio showed up just in time for the rolls to start and was a complete wrecking ball. Started from standing and jumped all over my guard. How I haven't been injured by him yet is beyond me. Poor Joey was after Julio, and I was not in the mood to let a white belt work after Julio manhandled me. I didn't like how I did in my roll with James as I was tentative b/c I was trying techniques that I didn't have much experience using. That's the only way to get better, but it slows me down and makes my rolls with him less fun.

Hustle and I went after class, and he came after it at a pretty good clip. I was defending for the most part. I think I defended an omoplata/arm-bar combo when time stopped. Was pretty happy to get out of that one. Savannah had just picked up some pointers on passing guard, so she was working those for the vast majority of our roll. She was definitely improved, and I probably should have let her have a pass when she was doing the technique correctly AND being coached by James, but I didn't.