Sat Fundies and Nooner

My Fundamentals class is dwindling. Only four people this week. There are plenty of newish white belts that attend the noon class. Maybe some of them can't make 10:30am, but I suspect it's more a matter of them not wanting to attend as opposed to not being able to attend, for whatever reason.

I covered top side-control, which I'm becoming more comfortable teaching. The Ryan Hall Passing series has really helped me think and teach some aspects of the top game more conceptually. Hard to say if I'm applying during rolling, which is where the rubber really meets the road.

The noon class focused on back-mount escapes. Escape to the good side, escape bad side. I think the last was escape using deep half if you can't free the top hook.

Rolled with Naomi, Nick and Zack. May have had one more, don't remember. No submissions, mount or back-mount only. I needed a light day b/c I could feel that I was coming down with a cold bug. I let Naomi work a bit, but she was legitimately doing well pushing the action and staying on top when she got there. I got mount at some point. Zack worked a fair amount from top half. I tried in vain numerous times to use the 93 guard and extend the leg for a sweep. I think I got him on his butt once.

Nick's spiderguard game is really coming along. I don't know if he got a sweep, but he was making it very tough for me to make any forward progress. I hate being in someone's spiderguard, but I'm really glad we have some people at the gym that are using it. I eventually got to mount or back-mount near the end of the round after finally passing his guard.

I spent a good portion of Sunday morning and Sunday night watching Worlds 2011. I thought it was odd that they interviewed the winners, b/c I don't recall them doing that the past several years. As I was watching the interviews for the women's finals, I figured out why they probably stopped doing that. During Leticia's interview, she made a statement that the Federation needed to start steroid testing b/c it was clear that some people were using. Later on, Gabi responded in a torrent of Portuguese, which made me wish I would really buckle down and make it a priority to learn it. Her translator probably gave a sterilized version of her response.

Anyway, watching jiu jitsu makes me want to do jiu jitsu, but alas, not feeling good. No Monday class for me. :(