No Gi Black Friday

11/29

I sent a text to James in the morning to see if someone was going to host an open mat. I felt like I had put on 10lb in the past week that I've been sick. No open mats though, had to wait until no gi in the evening.

There were seven of us: James, Jason (p), Joey, Savannah, Cory and Ben. It was an hour and a half of rolling, with one person sitting out. We started out flow-rolling, and I was paired with Savannah first. She must have been saving up some aggression from Thanksgiving family get-togethers, b/c she went immediately into smash mode. I squawked "flow roll!!! flow roll!!" from underneath her cross-face. It was all in good fun.

Taking a week off and coming back to no gi was a bit rough as far as timing and executing technique was concerned. On the positive side, my body felt great and I had cardio for hours. I've also dropped the habit off blindly reaching for gi grips. Now I just sit there and try to noodle out what to do. I tried a work a bit of spider guard by holding the triceps. I was able to maintain it, but couldn't do anything with it. I also tried to work the DLR back take, but without gi grips I was wholly unsuccessful. I really, really need to learn something other than the back take from DLR. Such a one trick pony.

Had a fun roll with James. Tried to take his back to no avail. I didn't feel like I was particularly on, but still did well enough that it was fun.

Jason smashed me. When he wasn't smashing, he was rolling into toe holds or trying to apply chokes that were sortof blood chokes but moreso uncomfortable/painful forearms on the side of my neck. I'm assuming that caused the re-tweaking of my neck. I'm going to have do a fair amount of targeted stretching before class today. :(