Thu Night

Out since Saturday due to head cold. Nothing bad. I've been comparing colds to the pneumonia I had last year and it helps me to remember that a head cold really isn't that big of a deal.

Since I've been out, I've been watching lots of jiu jitsu vids. An occasional instructional, but mostly highlights. I was looking forward to getting back on the mat tonight and doing my version of graceful, effective movement. 

Turns out I'm not an elite level black belt and I don't move the way they move. Not even close. There's nothing newsworthy here, except that a little seedling of expectation must have been planted at some point that my rolling would mimic high level competition rolling. 

Russ taught tonight, and it was refreshing to have a smaller class of 10 instead of 20+. He went over a takedown, pass, mount choke and transition to arm-bar from mount. Good stuff, all of it.

Rolled with Emilie, Jason W., Kelly, Manny and Russ. Looking back, I didn't roll that bad, but I certainly didn't feel like I rolled well. I tried to incorporate the hybrid spider/shin guard from a video that I watched on Michelle Nicolini but I didn't fare very well. Having never even drilled it, much less trying it live rolls against people better than I was...of course it's not going to go well.

Emilie did a great job of taking away space when she was in top position. She's a little noodly in bottom positions, but she's making great progress.

Jason and I had the same roll we always have, where we start on our knees, he shuts down my guard (open or closed), he passes into a stifling side-control and then submits with a wrist lock or leg lock. He was choosing predominantly leg locks tonight and it was getting to me. I finally started to go right to turtle from the reset just to try something different.

Kelly was working some inverted guard that I thought I did ok at nullifying. He started off the roll with donkey guard. *sigh*

Manny seemed to be giving me positions and working sub defense.

Russ was pretty much shutting me down everywhere.

I think my cardio isn't quite recovered from the cold, so hopefully that's the source of my doldrums. Class hasn't been fun for over week and it's bumming me out.