Day 4

The soreness continues.  I made it to Saturday morning Judo at 11:00 AM.  Sensei Beggs was the instructor and there were a few other black belts.  Most of the class I worked with Kenji (sp?).  He’s a brown belt firefighter who is ripped and pretty intense with his Judo.  We did some falls and some band work to start the class.  Then we did some entries into throws up and down the mat.  Kenji had to leave and I ended up working with Ken and John on a throw that I don’t remember the Japanese name for.  Basically you grab their arm and biscep and then do an inside trip and land on their chest.  I kept wanting to get into side control as fast as I could but I was told that it took away from the throw.  We also worked on another throw, I wish I could remember Japanese names but they escape me.  When I’m told what the names translate to they all make sense and are descriptive of what the throw is doing.  I just can't remember them yet.

Ken runs a sparring class after that.  It was only the two of us but we still worked on quite a bit.  We started off with some punch and kick combinations in the air and then repeating them on pads.  We moved on to some counters from a Muay Thai round house.  Finally we worked on striking from guard and defending punches from guard.

We finished with a couple of rounds of light standup sparring.  Ken definitely has some skill in standup as well as ground fighting.  His long legs, flexibility, and boxing work well for him.  We both incorporated punching with high and low kicks.  We didn’t get close enough to do any clinching or takedowns until the end.  It was a pretty good class, injury free and I’m glad I stayed.

Later on last night I went to Craig’s for dinner and to watch TUF finale season 13.  A couple of the fights didn’t go the way I was hoping for but I always enjoy some free MMA.