Gi class. Not so good. I’ve been doing this for a little over a year now but I don’t feel so good lately. I don’t know if it’s the summer heat, mid-terms at school, the stress from leaving my comfortable paying job for an unpaid internship that I don’t like all that much, or something else – who knows. Since the month started it feels like I’ve lost most of my technique. I can’t sweep anyone, I can’t pass guards anymore, and my guard gets passed like clockwork. I’ve felt this way several times before, but I thought I had put together a nice little set of basic techniques that I could fall back and depend on.

I guess everyone has learned my small bag of tricks and have developed counters to those few techniques. BJJ really does evolve and I should keep evolving and improving as well. The goals I set up for myself a few weeks ago should facilitate this process.

After light warm ups there was several rounds of rolling. I think I defended well against a huge purple belt and a huge blue belt. It’s the non-noob whites and new blue belts that have been giving me all the trouble. Against the three that I rolled with, I kept defending or falling into traps I should’ve seen coming. One kept cross-choking me and the other swung his leg violently at my face as he went for an armbar, causing my nose to bleed. After, there was a lot of butterfly guard defense/passing drill. One guy is in butterfly guard defending or trying to get deep half-guard, the other tries to pass.

Guard passing. The only guard I passed was the big blue belt’s. He kept trying to attack my arm and neck, and when I based out after a sweep attempt, I was able to pass. The rest of the roll was spent trying to get my side control tight.  All the white belts I rolled with were all doing butterfly guards, I couldn’t pass any of them!  I remember being able to pass butterfly guards before…  In the drills later, I had a real difficult time passing.  I did a few times, but I really need to work on making my passes tighter and on sprawling on my toes when needed.

Guard Offense.  I only got guard once during rolling, which was when I was against the huge purple belt.  I defended it pretty well and attempted several sweeps.  I’ve yet to sweep a purple belt… The drill later didn’t really have any room for offense, as it was a defense drill for the guy doing the butterfly guard.  I haven’t really practiced or tried the butterfly guard, so I really sucked on this drill.

Names.  I remembered some.  Weight.  Still where it was the last time.

Overall, I should really work on achieving tightness in technique.  That and work more on my conditioning.  After the first roll, I felt wiped out.  I’ll try to do 15 minutes on AG’s elliptical, with my heart-rate at at least double the normal resting rate.   Hopefully I can get my conditioning up first, so I can have the energy to work on my technique when in class.

Anyway, midterms are next week…

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BJJ class 40 and 41

BJJ Class 125

BJJ Class 127

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