Saturday

Do you know how I know that tournament season is coming? 

When the injuries start to plague training!

I winged it a bit in the Fundamentals class b/c I was coming to the end of the curriculum and didn't want to start afresh when there was going to be a two break in between classes. So I decided to go over some open guard basics. I showed a DLR sweep and back-take, and then promptly lost everyone on the inversion drill (going from DLR -> RDLR from one side to the other of a standing partner). That was awesome, b/c I saw an opportunity to go over something that we do in class on occasion that might be confusing to people. Also had a good sized group of 9 (excluding myself). I feel like it was one of those days where I really provided some value.

The noon class started off fine. We did submissions from bottom side control (which is another way of saying that testing is coming up in the relative near future for some people). Trapping the far arm and going for wrist-lock, shoulder-lock or inverted triangle. If none of that pans out, attack the near arm with kimura or americana. Felt pretty good with all of these.

Rolled with Rachael, and everything was fine. I think it was pretty back and forth, though I tended to have the upper hand.

Roll with Chuck. He hit a nice sweep to mount (don't know exactly how), I was able to escape, reverse and had back or mount at one point. He is very scrambly and goes after things pretty fast, so I try to slow the rolls down. I think my neck got tweaked during this roll, b/c my next roll with Jerry was terrible. Turning my head and contorting my body felt awful. I tried to keep going, but he was passing my guard with ease and maintaining top position uncontested. I realized something was wrong, and sat out for the last and final round.

Felt stiff after class, but I could tell later that night that it wasn't a small, couple of hour thing. Had a difficult time finding a comfortable sleeping position. A bit better the next day, but still pretty stiff and both class and lifting are out of the question.

Hoping that it'll be better with a couple of days rest and that I can get some rolls in before the tournament next weekend.