Impromptu Seminar

James sent a text out Tues afternoon to several of us to see if we wanted to do a seminar with a 6th degree black belt at another school that night. I hadn't heard of the guy before, but he was a Rickson black belt and that was good enough for me. It turned out to be just James and I, as everyone else had to work (or didn't want to go).

The seminar started at 7pm and we got there with about five minutes to spare. We started off with a mellow warm up that turned into an ab killer. I'm still feeling the effects days later. I don't have incredibly developed abs, but they're decent. I thought.

First techniques were self-defense based from a standing position. Good review on a topic that we never cover in our classes.

During the warm-ups I thought to myself that if I had my druthers, I'd want a 6th degree Rickson black belt to go over cross chokes, preferably from guard but mount or elsewhere would be beneficial as well. No kidding, the first thing he shows on the ground is cross-chokes from guard. The first variation had the palm down arm going under the palm up arm, which I hadn't seen before. The second variation was the more typical plam down arm on top, but with some details that were new. I was working with James which was awesome b/c he was really able to help me fine tune where I was going wrong.

After that it was some off-shoots of what to do if you have an arm overwrapped. A sweep from butterfly and then transitioning from top-side to a toe hold if they plant their near foot on their thigh. The final technique was a choke that was predicated on throwing someone out of your back-control and them turtling up, which is a fairly uncommon reaction in my experience. It was tough being the uke in that my instinct is to put my back on the mat on the non-choking side, not roll to turtle. 

All in all it was good to get exposure outside of normal classes. Haven't been to a seminar outside of our school in a while. It was also great to get some one-on-one time with James, as we haven't really talked at length in quite some time.