Benefit Seminar

Wow.

Over a hundred people, including 20+ black belts. Between the registration fees and raffles, around $10k was raised. The instruction was top notch, with a half hour allotted for each of the 10 or so instructors. There was no way I could take notes, so I'm hoping the video is distributed. It lasted around 5 hours with no formal breaks. 

Giva Santana came, unbeknownst to Foster who was really moved by the support. Renato Laranja was quite a character. I learned later that not only is he not Brazilian, but he's a former soap opera actor. Interesting dude, to say the least. Very entertaining.

 I felt fortunate to participate, and I was proud of my coach who showed some techniques and my teammates that attended. The support of the community was really something to behold.

Rachael I stayed Saturday night and joined the Sunday classes at Foster's. The first was a regular class consisting of warm-up and technique. Jimmy (?) the brown belt showed chokes from mount, including the chicken wing one that I often forget. Rolls after technique. I had two purple belts and Jimmy. One of the purple belts worked me over pretty good. Good, fun rolls. 

The next class was a Fundamentals class, then a competition class. Rachael and I wanted to bail on the Fundamentals to save our energy, but we both thought it might be construed as kindof rude. The class was very mellow, and to be honest sitting for an hour might have been worse. I got to work with a brown belt, and I picked up some movement tips from him just having him do the techniques on me. Very smooth transitions from one side to the next.

The comp class was warm-up of your choice for 20min, then people would be paired up to roll with a ref present. A couple of people would sit out, similar to a comp. The idea was to get the atmosphere as close to a competition atmosphere as possible.

There were five women (four blues and me), and we rotated through each other. My goal was to get takedowns and not pull guard. I worked my takedowns and they were largely successful, even though they were ugly as sin. I was able to work my game without much trouble in the first two matches, which were back to back. The third woman pulled guard and very nearly locked up a triangle. I was swept but managed to wriggle out of it and get to a top position. No submissions.

We went again and it was another tough match, but I was able to again get to top position. 

After that I rolled with a couple of the black belt guys, one of whom got me in a gogoplata. Boooo...

Overall, 9hrs of jiu jitsu in two days. Rachael and I were both pretty uncomfortable on the ride home.