May 29th-30th - Judo and Morning Open (My Fingers Hurt)

I am on my once a year week alone without the family.  They took off yesterday for my wife's father's house.  My objective once again is to participate in as many martial arts classes as possible.  Yesterday to start it off I went to Judo.

Sensei Dave taught class and there were somewhere around 8 participants.  We started off with a warmup and then basic falls.  We did a lot of fitting in and then throwing.  In between some partner drills we did a leg workout with jumping onto mats.  I focused on shoulder throw (Ipon sienagi sp?), then a hip throw with the leg out (horiagoshi), and then soto makakomi.  I almost hurt Ken at one point when I switched from regular shoulder throw to a drop shoulder throw without telling him and made him faceplant a bit.  We did just a little bit of randori standing up, then finished with ground fighting.  I felt right at home rolling and seemed to be able to take everyone's back fairly easily.

Mike and I rolled afterward and worked on some various things like the bull fighter pass.  I need to learn this better.

This morning Robert was taking it a little easy but was trying to keep his sweat going.  He brought a couple of guys from Lincoln, MMA to roll as well.  It was a large group and I rolled with everyone at least once.  Some highlights:

Robert: I felt pretty smooth rolling with him and was able to attack more.  Maybe it was because I had the mindset that I was taking it easy that I relaxed a little more and didn't worry as much about losing.

David: Stupid triangles.  Still my nemesis. 

Fuji: I was only able to get top position on Fuji once and it wasn't for very long.  Otherwise he was destroying me with knee on belly.  I got to figure out how to get out of that.  He tapped me out a couple of times

Ken: Like usual it was a battle to pass his guard and then keep a good position after that.

Josh (wrestling coach): Obviously strong from the top and had good movement.  I was able to sweep him a couple of times with half guard and also a flower sweep.  I got him with a guillotine and he got me later with an arm triangle.

Other visitor: Just a relaxed roll, he had been recovering from a leg injury.  I was able to sweep him a couple of times.

James: Almost got him with a guillotine.  He said it was the best roll he had with me.  

Now I'm sitting here at work and my fingers are very sore from all of the judo gripping yesterday and rolling this morning.

May 25th & 27th - Open Mat and No-Gi

Like usual I was late to no-gi class on Friday, but unlike usual everyone decided to leave as soon as I got there.  Must be a sign of the summer heat.  Luckily Mike decided to stay and roll with me for a bit.  I was reluctant to oblige his desire to work add in ankle locks to our roll because my toe had been bothering me a little but I've been interested in ankle locks lately and I know I'll have to start picking up on them as soon as I get my blue belt. 

I was getting wise to some of his ankle lock setups but he still caught me a couple of times.  I'm amazed at how quickly he's jumped in skill level.  Like usual we got stuck in the position of me trying to pass his guard and him retaining it.  There were a couple of times where I came very close and maybe once would have been considered a pass.  I recall one time I went for a toe hold but he got a heel hook at the same time and his lock was tighter.  Amazingly I tapped him out in the last match we were.  We scrambling and I went for a knee bar.  I was in the right position but it wasn't tight enough, he triangled his legs and a toe hold presented itself.

Sunday consisted of about 8 of us with the experience levels split in half.  After a quick warmup Conan looked at me and asked what we were working on.  The first thing that came to mind was ankle locks.  He took us through the straight ankle, heel hook, and toe hold all starting from top guard position.  It was a good review and I learned some things about heel hook hand/wrist position that I didn't know before.

During open mat I went with Adam first.  It was pretty much a defensive battle for me trying to keep my limbs near my body and fight for underhooks where possible.  We went back and forth a couple times in half guard as well but eventually he got me to north/south and a kimura soon followed.

I fought with Jerad for the remainder of the time.  Somehow I was able to take a top position right off the bat and pass his guard to side control.  From there it took a lot of my mental ability to try to stay one step ahead of him as I went from knee on belly to trying to secure an arm, at one point his hand was down by my leg and I grabbed his wrist and slid into north-south choke.  It worked and after a couple of bucks I got him to tap. 

The remainder of our matches consisted of him dominating me with a couple of exceptions.  I almost took his back at one point where I had his arm locked against his body with my legs.  But I couldn't get onto his back, I realized later I should have rolled him onto me instead of trying to get on top of him.  He was controlling me well with knee on belly and then north/south and sprawl position.  I believe he got me with 2 darce chokes.  After that and then he got me with the reverse arm triangle using a leg to step over my head as bait that he's taught a couple of classes on that I've attended. 

May 24th - Gi

Conan was the teacher yesterday.  We started off with a warmup some tripod stuff and then basic falling (arg!). We started off with some Judo stuff working with partners.  We worked on kimuras from side mount for the rest of the class.

Conan rolled with me first for open mat.  I felt like I was able to move a little more than I usually do with him.  I mostly spent my time in side control and then I'd get to turtle.  I don't feel like I ever attacked but I almost got half guard once, but I think he stopped me with a crossface.  I did a lot of defending but he eventually caught up to me and got me with an americana. 

The other Josh worked out yesterday.  It's been a while since he left us for Mid-America.  He did feel stronger and I noticed some little changes to his game.  He was able to take my back rather quickly using an armdrag.  I was able to escape.  From there I worked a lot of different things like spider guard, half guard, knee on belly.  I was able to pull off a couple submissions (Kimura, North/South Choke) before we had to quit.  Conan was trying to give Josh some pointers but I think we were both confused for a little while because we didn't know which Josh he was talking to.

May 23rd - Morning Open

Robert was our target today.  Participants included David, Ken, new Mike, and Claire.  We're preparing him for his MMA fight next Saturday.  He ended up going for 10 five minute rounds in a row with 30 seconds rest between each.  From my point of view his cardio and strength kept up for the entire time.  So, maybe I should have pushed the pace on him a little more.

I often wonder about mindset leading up to a fight.  Will you damage someone's confidence if you continually beat them right before a fight or a tournament.  It didn't happen in this case but I was thinking about it when I was rolling before the tournament last week.  Or, should you take it a little more easy on them and let them get their confidence up in their techniques?  Not sure but I could argue for both sides.

While I wasn't fighting Robert I was helping Claire and Mike with armbars and armbar defense.  Then I rolled with Ken.  I mostly focused on half guard and feel like I'm getting a lot more control of that bottom leg.  I was able to reverse a couple of times but Ken in his infinite annoying guard retention kept regaining guard.  I also have a hole somewhere in my half guard game cause there were a couple of times where he was able to remove his leg from my half guard.  All in all a good morning session.

May 21st - Gi (More Half)

Jerad taught class last night and we did the other side of half guard by working on passing from the top.  I already feel pretty confident with this so didn't have too many problems.  I found myself concentrating more brain power on the bottom stuff.  This was a little easier to do as I ended up on the senior side and worked with new people for the entire class.  After working on a couple of passes and rotating partners we did some 2 minute top and bottom live drilling and went through several partners with that.

I went and attacked Adam right after class and tried to pass his guard.  We ended up in half guard like usual and we both worked on our new half guard strategy.  I need to focus more on locking the leg down and controlling it because whenever I start to move my upper body my lower body kind of relaxes.  So like Ray said I need to do both.

I worked with Mike and Claire and helped them with various things.  Apparently Mike was impressed with my performance Saturday, which is weird to think about.  Have I become a student to look up to like I look up to Jerad, David, Ken, etc (there are quite a few other people).

May 20th - No-Gi (Tournament Reflection and Videos)

Yesterday was a reflection day and not too formal.  Ray and I were the first ones and it seemed like maybe the only ones, but then Jerad, Adam, Bauer, and Claire showed up.  Just for me due to my performance Saturday, Ray decided to impart his half guard wisdom.  We got with a partner and would work on half guard and Ray would come around and help us.

The 2 things that I took away most from the session was that I need to affect and control their leg.  There were too many times during the tournament that I focused on upper body but did very little with the leg.  The second thing is that when I go for the sweep I need to shoot under their ankle or opposite leg to my shoulder instead of just to my elbow.  I need to try to take their place instead of try to pull them on top of me.  At the end of the class I still had some issues with when to shoot under and how to stop getting smashed.  But, I'll work on it.

The videos from the tournament are below.

May 19th - Battle on the Plains IV

I competed in my second Jiu-Jitsu tournament yesterday and I'd say it went pretty well.  It was hosted out of our school in Lincoln, NE and was a relatively small tournament.  Naturally I was worried that there wouldn't be anyone my size and skill level to compete against.  But, they ended up making a decent division of 4 for gi and 3 for no-gi.  Since there were fewer gi competitors and I think they had some trouble figuring out the no-gi brackets at first, they decided to run through the gi divisions right off the bat. 

I'm not going to try to do a play by play of all my matches as everything is a blur and I was able to take video of it and am working on converting them to youtube.  So, I'll post them soon and just give highlights.

In Gi I won 3 matches all by points.  My first and third matches were with the same guy, Alex I believe his name was.  He weighed quite a bit more than me and was also a blue belt.  I used my half guard skills a lot and then got reversal and knee on belly points when I could.  I was almost kimura'd by him several times.

My second match was against Will, which I dreaded.  Will beats me all of the time in open mat so why not in a tournament?  I ended up staying on top and passing his guard several times for points.

In no-gi it was Alex and another guy from his school (we'll call him wrestler cause I don't remember his name).  I rolled with wrestler first.  Aside from him getting the takedown and keeping me on the bottom for a good portion of the match, I was able to take his back and sink in a rear naked choke.

My final match was against Alex again.  He had a pretty good slamming takedown on me and pretty much dominated me from there.  I was able to get to half guard and I remember him saying something like "Oh shit."  He beat me by points and passed my guard several times.  I was gassed by the end of it.

Ray said that we'd be working on some half guard stuff today, and that he'd show me some stuff from his half guard game.  That will be a huge help because I really love half guard and feel comfortable there.