Last night I debated on whether or not to go to class. Right before class I got a splitting headache, but since I missed last week, I forced myself to go. In retrospect, it may have been better to skip – I don’t think I’m 100% bounced back from some sinus/cold crud I’ve been fighting nearly all of January. Consequently the intense physicality of the BJJ class seemed to wear me out more quickly and more thoroughly last night than usual. But, I persevered almost until the end. I sat out the last 2 rounds of rolling because my headache was getting worse, and I just didn’t have any more energy.
One of the blue belts was working with a couple other noobs before class on sweeps, and I joined them. He had us drilling the Elevator sweep, and the Scissor sweep. They do the Scissor sweep a little differently here than what I’m used to. We started class with a more-vigorous-than-usual warmup, and our normal armbar drills from guard and mount. Then we worked on a Single-leg / Fireman’s carry takedown. I was doing it wrong, in that the guy kept ending up behind me. When the instructor did it, he was ending up almost in kesagatame with the guy. I may have started to improve a little with later reps. It’s going to take more drilling to develop the feel for that thing. Next we worked on how to transition from that setup into a double-leg takedown, in the event your opponent resists the single-leg.
We moved on to groundwork next. We worked on a basic Butterfly sweep, then a drill for passing the Butterfly guard. Butterfly guard is brand new territory for me, so it was pretty awkward.
I rolled with a couple of blue belts at the end of class, and feel like I fared better than I have been, although obviously, they’re not going 100% on me. They’re still trying to teach me, which I appreciate. In particular, I feel I did a better job of not being flat on my back, (although sometimes there was nothing I could do about it). Also, Pat showed me something last week that helped me a bit when trying to shrimp to guard; I mentioned in another blog post about moving the top half of my body to get better angles and get my knee in. I saw some success with that last night that I’m sure will improve with practice. There were also some things I feel I did worse this time: namely remembering to relax and breathe, and to not trying to muscle my opponent so much (which gets me exhausted more quickly).
One of the blue belts was working with a couple other noobs before class on sweeps, and I joined them. He had us drilling the Elevator sweep, and the Scissor sweep. They do the Scissor sweep a little differently here than what I’m used to. We started class with a more-vigorous-than-usual warmup, and our normal armbar drills from guard and mount. Then we worked on a Single-leg / Fireman’s carry takedown. I was doing it wrong, in that the guy kept ending up behind me. When the instructor did it, he was ending up almost in kesagatame with the guy. I may have started to improve a little with later reps. It’s going to take more drilling to develop the feel for that thing. Next we worked on how to transition from that setup into a double-leg takedown, in the event your opponent resists the single-leg.
We moved on to groundwork next. We worked on a basic Butterfly sweep, then a drill for passing the Butterfly guard. Butterfly guard is brand new territory for me, so it was pretty awkward.
I rolled with a couple of blue belts at the end of class, and feel like I fared better than I have been, although obviously, they’re not going 100% on me. They’re still trying to teach me, which I appreciate. In particular, I feel I did a better job of not being flat on my back, (although sometimes there was nothing I could do about it). Also, Pat showed me something last week that helped me a bit when trying to shrimp to guard; I mentioned in another blog post about moving the top half of my body to get better angles and get my knee in. I saw some success with that last night that I’m sure will improve with practice. There were also some things I feel I did worse this time: namely remembering to relax and breathe, and to not trying to muscle my opponent so much (which gets me exhausted more quickly).
1 comment:
OH! Now I understand! That last comment made everything more clear!
;-)
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