Fundies and Open Mat Nooner

An...interesting mix at Fundies this morning. Nando brought his gf for her first class. A guy who comes in now and again brought a friend, who he introduced as Father Andrew. Which explained the robes. Lots of new folks that I hadn't met before. Richard (Joe lookalike), Cole (younger guy), and can't remember who else. 

The position of the day--back control escapes--was perfect for a class full of new people. I thought it went fairly well, even though my first run-through of the escape to choking side escape didn't go quite right. Nando wasn't giving me quite enough pressure, so I didn't have to get rid of the second hook before turning over. I corrected it the second time around, but was thrown off a little bit by the lack of tension. Overall though, pretty happy with it.

After Fundies rolled with Blaine, Nando and Richard. Nando was going all out and had top positions for the most part, but I wasn't in real danger and was able to regain guard. Blaine and I played our usual game of him in my guard. I tried to open it up a bit, but kept closing my guard. I'd like to just keep trying to play my open game with him.

Noon class was straight rolling. Rolled with Sol, Kasey, Dess, Glen, Jamie, James. Of note was my roll with Kasey, which I felt went much better than I've rolled with him before. I think it was partly due to him opening up a bit, as he went for a rolling back attack from top half guard. 

Had a pretty fun roll with James, although he caught me twice with an omoplata while I was trying to knee cut pass. He told me after the first one that I need to make sure I had the underhook, but I apparently didn't listen b/c the next time through I got caught with the exact same thing. 

One pretty cool thing though. He was doing the escape from back control toward the choking arm side where you grab the back of the head and step out wide and belly down. As he stepped around I was sortof able to follow, but b/c he had the back of my head I was getting flipped in front him. I flailed around somehow almost got a crucifix or armbar. I can't explain it well, but it was wild and James said "holy shit" so loud I thought I injured him. Was very close to awesome is the summation.

Back in the Fray

I barely feel like I'm back, and had a so-so rolling session on Wednesday morning. Nonetheless, last night James asked if I would cover the morning class today. I haven't been feeling especially confident in any of my techniques aside from things that I've already shown on the occasions that I've taught regular classes before. So I semi-frantically went through my notebook trying to find something and came across some notes on sweeps from reverse half guard. Voila!

Smallish class for what we've had lately, I think 12 or so. Shaun was the only other purple belt. Folks seemed like what I covered, so that was nice. We had a girl who just started today and unfortunately the techniques were fairly advanced, considering she didn't really know what guard was, much less reverse half guard sweeps. Rachael helped her out, for which I was thankful.

Rolled with new girl, Rachael and Chris N. Rachael got past my guard and it was all over. She slowly and systematically got a kimura for the finish. Had a good roll with Chris, got a sweep, probably got swept back. Very evenly matched.

Drop Ins

Trained twice in ten days. Stopped in at one school for an evening advanced gi class and was a little surprised by the basic nature of the class. I'm all about fundamentals, but this was being taught like it was their first exposure to DLR. Another red flag is that I was very evenly matched with their 4 stripe purple belt dudes. Something is amiss somewhere if I'm going toe to toe with a 4 stripe purple dude.

The other school I visited is in the same affiliation as ours. Instructor was no-nonsense, and it was no gi so I had no idea of the experience level of my training partners. Went over some attacks from the arm-wrap that I haven't seen before. I was doing surprisingly poorly on the warm-ups and technique, although my training partner mentioned a number of times that he wished he had the hip mobility that I did. I'd guess that he was a low purple and most of the other guys were high blues or thereabouts. Almost all of them were big dudes, but they went surprisingly light during the rolls. Didn't try to hulk smash their way through, which was very much appreciated.

Sleep and hydration were serious issues on the trip. It's two days later and I'm just now starting to feel like my body is getting back to normal. Went to class on Wednesday morning. Warm-ups consisted of flow rolling, and I felt like a complete idiot during my first flow roll. It's like I've never done jiu jitsu before, even though it had only been a week. It was better once I got going.

Had a pretty decent roll with James at the end of class. Also rolled with Opal, Laurie, and possibly Jason S. again.

Very happy to be home.