Love My Gym So Much

I didn't realize how much I loved my gym until I trained at other gyms for a couple of weeks. Yowza. 

I did a Saturday class at a gym that my teammates and I have stopped in before at Pans. Wanted to get a bunch of rolls in with a brown belt FB friend but we were only able to go for one round. Back to AOJ on Sunday morning. Much more chill vibe on the weekends and fewer people. That was probably my favorite class there. Didn't get to roll a wide variety of people, but got to put a little work in and practice the bolo and long step from the private.

Did the drive home in one shot, 22hrs and only one cup of coffee. Was incredibly happy to walk into my gym after a full day of rest and be with my peeps. Showed the drills and techniques that I could remember off the top of my head. I think the crab ride to leg drag and crab ride to back take were the biggest hits. James seemed happy to have me back which felt good.

Had a roll with a big guy where I made the cardinal sin of getting him in my closed guard. I wanted to work open guard, but was losing it so defaulted to closed guard. Some day I will learn to stop doing that against people who have considerable girth, but that day has apparently not arrived. The roll mainly consisted of him leaning forward and pinning me down. I tried in vain to flower sweep, scissor sweep, arm drag and create distance by extending my hips. He was an immovable object that was crushing me literally and figuratively. At some point I ended up in a horribly tenuous bottom half guard with my arm trapped to my body. I vainly tried to use my legs to improve my position but no, nothing. I tried to get my arm free, either as an underhook or not, and had no success. I somehow finally got back to a more or less full guard before the end of the round. In the process my shoulder got jacked up which bothered me quite a bit yesterday. 

Normally I wouldn't be phased by an injury, but I have a CF competition coming up next weekend. It's a partner workout that Niki agreed to do even though neither she nor I knew how hard the workouts were going to be. There is, not surprisingly, a lot of shoulder involved in the workouts (at least the ones we know about so far). One workout starts off with 100 presses that we can split between the two of us, which is going to be awful. The person not performing presses has to keep their bar in the front rack position. RIP.