Week 1 comes to a close

Goddamn, this is addictive. I wasn't really planning on training 4 out of 5 days this week, but as the end of the day came around I couldn't keep it out of my mind.

Thursday started off with some heavy drilling of an arm drag sweep from the spider guard. I'm going to describe it so I can commit it to memory-- this will probably be useless for any readers. Drag the arm in across their body and get it in it under your leg. Slide your opposite leg across under that leg and hook your instep around your opponent's knee, and get the other instep in back of his knee. Then pull him onto you to break his posture, and quickly roll using your leverage on his arm and his knee to get mount or side control.

I had Damon as a sparring partner for this, which is great. He's bigger and stronger than me, so I can't bully my way through any of the moves and I have to use good technique. It doesn't hurt that he's pretty funny-- when we roll he sings about jiu-jitsu in a high-pitched voice to show me that you need to relax. Good execution is "jiu jittery". It's funnier when you're there, trust me.

We rolled a little more "for real" this time after drilling, and I realized how far I have to go. He let me get some good positions but I was still powerless to get any submissions. I resisted his attempts well, I think, more on instinct than on technique. I tried to keep my hands in and clasp them palm to palm when I was in trouble, and for the most part that wasn't bad. My stamina still sucks, though, and I felt bad that I couldn't give my partner a better roll.

Near the end of practice Fernando asked me if I wanted to roll. He's a white belt that has been training for about a month, and I have at least 70 pounds on him. I was about to decline, but he seemed game, and hey, what the hell. He is very fast and nearly got me in a triangle right from the get-go, but I was able to muscle my way out of it. Once I got side control he really had no way to escape my 220 pounds, especially after I had sprawled out and dropped my hips. I got him to submit to an Americana from this position, and then again with a Kimura on our next round. I was proud to show what I had learned, but it seemed pretty unfair. He paid me back when my wind ran out and he got me with a guillotine choke.

By Friday I was a little beaten up but there was no way I was going to miss training. Friday is no-gi, and I figured I needed to get a feel for that aspect of the game. We started by drilling an escape from tight side control with a "forklift" arm posture and "machine gun" bridging. It got interesting when we built it up to rolling out into a position to get one of two chokes (by rolling towards the opponent's head) or a takedown (by rolling towards the legs).

I rolled with Craig and he showed me a few new things. The best was the armbar from the guard-- a bread-and-butter technique. I had a conceptual leap to understanding that a missed triangle flows very easily into the armbar, which I guess means that I am starting to "get it". Craig still armbarred me very easily a few more times, but I showed some spunk, and started to relax a little more. He's not as strong as Damon but he's more technical so it was an interesting session. Everything is still happening very fast but I am starting to grasp how things flow, so there's a start.

I'm going to take the weekend off to get restored. If it doesn't rain too hard I'll take one of the dogs up on one of the trails in the morning to get some blood flowing to my legs. My groin and hips are totally rocked!