Wednesday double

As it is the end of my first semester already (only swot vac and exam weeks still to go), there are no more lectures on Wednesdays. Which means I can get to the lunchtime BJJ class AND the evening one!

The lunchtime class was tiny. There was one of the young guys, 3 striper, and a completely new guy and myself. I took the warm up. Us two more experienced types took the newbie in turns, teaching him basic drills and moves. The rest of the time we had private time with Sensei, working on particular stuff and having a bit of a wrestle. My first go was frustrating, as I ended up on the bottom of switch back side control about as fast as I can write this, and I had a great deal of trouble getting my elbow in. Anyway, it wasn't long before I was done in after that and the rest of that session was a post mortem of where I could have done better. He sent me off with the words: have a think about it.

Then it was a turn with the new guy for me, my job was to show him the basic under the leg pass and the guardwork drill. I got so wrapped up in this that it seemed no time until I was called over again. And when he asked me if I'd thought about it, I went huh? (But at least remembered later that day what it was!)

The next little wrestle went better. I actually moved somewhat intelligently at times, and escaped his back control, defended from turtle for a bit before he got my back again. After a time, the inevitable choke came. But this time, I earned some good words. For simultaneously defending his arms and attacking his legs. He said he really was concerned about an ankle lock and he had a hell of a time to finally get an arm in where he could grab the choke. After that, I had a chance to work on some stuff from the top. Not that much happened and his defence makes mine look sick, but I did get the chance to have a play and even tried for knee ride at one point. That's unheard of for me ;-) . Then we did some more postmortem on the whole thing and had a quick look at a way to bridge and roll someone if they get high mount. It was a really, really useful session.

Wednesday night was on some rubberguard stuff. A refresher for some of us, but new stuff to some who were there. Basically, how to use the jaws of life to get double underhooks once we have lockdown. Then, whip up and go for the old school sweep. We made a mini drill out of that, once we had the sweep, we ended up in half guard top, and then our partner would go through the whip up and sweep...

Then we did the alternative where we go to dogfight, and as he pushes back into us we bring our free knee close to his trapped one, reach under for his leg and sweep him over the top of us. We drilled that for a bit, also going back and forth.

The rest of the class was wrestling. I had an excellent long roll with a guy about my size with a fair amount of grappling experience. Lots of fun, heaps of tumbling over one another, I managed sweeps, I went for several attacks and in the end he caught me somehow which I can't remember. I had another brief roll with a one striper and front choked him within less than a minute, but I did show him where he made his mistake afterwards.

Another great class. I was still a bit short on energy, I guess that's the remnants of the cobwebs from last week. But it's all good. I'm back to believing that I have learned a few things and that I'm not hopeless after all!