Visited a couple of schools while I was in Colorado. The first had people that were exceptionally welcoming. I mean, just ridiculously nice people. Their noon class consisted of self defense, specifically kick self defense. I was pretty winded during warm-ups, having only been at altitude for 24hrs or so. The techniques weren't terribly taxing, although I did feel uncoordinated since most everything consisted of being on one's feet.
After technique was open mat for an hour or so. I barely held my own against blues, and in some cases didn't even do that. Rolled with the brown belt instructor that had a simple but effective failed flower/pendulum sweep to triangle by intentionally gripping the wrong sleeve. Rolled with a newish white belt last. Incredibly welcoming crew. Something I'd like to emulate, at least as an individual at our school. There were a couple of instances in which I felt like not having enough oxygen was an issue, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.
The next place I dropped in was for a Sunday open mat. All gym affiliations welcome, no fees. They had an interesting approach to selecting partners for open mats. Everyone lined up by belt rank and then the highest belt would pick his partner, then the next highest belt and so on. There was one brown, a slew of purples and then blues and whites. I ended up rolling with all of the upper belts. My first roll was a guy who had been out for over a year due to surgery, and I did more or less ok with him. Everyone else pretty much whomped on me.
Stamina was much better than the day before.
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