May 27th Gi Class

Ray taught yesterday's class.  I think it's pretty cool to have different instructors on different days.  You get some different perspectives and teaching styles.  They may even present the same information but give little hints that help the technique work for them.

We started the class with a regular warmup of jogging and rolls then some pushups and an ab workout that was pretty good.

Ray went into some takedowns with controlling the opponent's elbow and then hooking their leg with yours. 

The bulk of the class focused on half guard lock-down, whip up and some other cool techniques.  I love working from here because I end up in this position a lot and I've already researched Eddie Bravo's half guard stuff.  There were some things that Ray taught a little differently that helped with one of the sweeps I've been having trouble with.

For open mat I started off with Ray.  Once again he has a different style than Ken, David and Jerad.  I'm always amazed when he points out that he could easily leg lock me in whatever position that we are in.  He doesn't do it because I'm a whitebelt and there's a rule about that.  I guess the best way I can describe Ray is that when he's going for something there are quick repeated bursts of movement.  First he always gives me his neck but I'm not able to choke him.  Then there's some scrambling on my part and he'll end up on the offensive.  He got me in a pretty nasty bicep cutter that I'm still feeling this morning.  As well as a triangle and I think a Kimura too.  I then sparred with a fellow white belt (I think his name was Brad).  He was pretty tough and neither of us submitted the other and we quit to bow out of class.

Although in my previous post I said I shouldn't focus on winning as much, I really dislike losing all the time.  While it bruises the ego to have my ass handed to me repeatedly it is also pushing me to improve.  Working with these guys that have been doing this for a while helps me appreciate the training methods, how good they are and how good I will be.  I wonder how different I will feel when I reach the skill level that they are at now.  I suppose if I look back at teaching Hapkido even though I've done the beginner techniques hundreds if not thousands of times, I'm still always trying to improve them.