BJJ Class 143
No gi, early afternoon class. It was a nice small class. We have a guest instructor in for two weeks – a female black belt and champion BJJ’er Vandi Diaz. She placed 2nd in the 2006 & 2007 World Championships and 1st in the Brazilian National and the South Brazilian Championships. She taught a very relaxed and open class.
I came in late and totally missed the warm-ups. I jumped straight into the techniques portion of the class. Technique was an ankle sub or heel hook from rear bear hug (without the arms in the hug). I was surprised she taught the heel hook as its quite a dangerous submission. But overall, it was a great technique to learn.
After the techniques was two rounds of rolling. I went against a five-month old white belt and I thought I’d be able to control him easily. I was surprised. We reversed each other a few times, and kept reversing each other in half-guard. I kept trying to go for deep half-guard but couldn’t quite get it.
I rolled next with a small woman and rolled light. Then the instructor noticed that the class wasn’t using our hips enough and we weren’t very fluid with it. We did a guard pass defense drill where you put your leg on your opponents shoulder, lift your hips and use that to regain guard.
Then I rolled with a purple belt and got my butt kicked. He got my back twice – because I gave it to him while avoiding knee on belly. I got a great reminder to move my hips away from my opponent after shrimping to go on turtle.
I then rolled with the same white belt from earlier. This time he was a little bit tired (but not gassed) and his game was very different. He wasn’t able to reverse or anything this time and I arm-barred him twice. Then class was done.
It’s so nice to be able to train twice in the same week again – I hope I can train regularly again. And I hope I can continue to afford being able to train – I’ve been unemployed for seven months now and I’ll have to stop training if my unemployment benefits runs out.. So hopefully I can land a job – or you can hire me to make you a website or blog!! (that links to my current & temporary online portfolio, which is why it’s pretty sparse – it’s hard to decide what web address to get)
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