It was hot in class last night. It had been stinking hot all day until the clouds came over. Then the temperature dropped from about 40 degrees C to just over thirty. But the sprinkle of rain sent the humidity through the roof, so it wasn't exactly a relief. I assume that training in Rio would feel similar :-) It was horrible in the dojo, and wile we took of the gi tops straight away, it was a sweat-fest. The joys of summer...
I was paired with my nemesis (hope he never reads this blog ;-) ). My job was to help him with his third and fourth stripe syllabus stuff. Armbars, armlocks and headlock escapes. As always, I found it harder to explain than to do it myself. However, thinking about it to help me explain a technique probably makes me understand it better in the long run. But I did manage to help him with several things and he got a lot of reps in.
That took up most of the class, everyobody working in pairs and groups on stuff they needed. Towards the end, we were sent to get the boxing gloves and mouthguards and do a bit more striking mixed in during rolling.
After going through the guys smaller than me like a dose of salts last week, and feeling (only very mildly) guilty about it, I sort of half expected the system to take revenge on me by sending me someone bigger. And as I pulled into the parking lot I had a fleeting thought of how horrible it would be to be under the nemesis while he's trying to hit me, too. I dropped that thought in horror.
So of course I ended up trading blows with him. Can the instructor read my mind? I think he can, sometimes...
In the end it wasn't so bad. I managed to hit him a few times, and locked him up in my guard. Funny how the threat of being hit curtails some techniques. For the first time in ages, I managed to threaten him with an armbar from guard. Didn't get it, but had him worried. Had more luck keeping him off with open guard, and managed to stand up and back away once. So all in all, more success than I expected. But a far cry from beating up the smaller guys. Ha.
Interestingly, I'm not bothered by the mouthguard. I used to wear one when I did stand up sparring during Karate and PFS classes, but haven't worn one in BJJ, not even in comps. Don't know, always figured it would annoy the hell out of me while rolling. But having worn it on and off for the last week, and grappled fairly hard while wearing it, I've come to the conclusion it's no big deal. So maybe I should make a habit of wearing it at least some of the time so that I'm ok with it in comps. Wouldn't be a bad idea, I suppose.
very impressive!
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