April 18th - Morning Open (Shed lbs and other goals)

In attendance: Ken, Robert, Erik, Claire.  I applaud Claire for her willingness to jump in there on a Wednesday morning with a bunch of guys much bigger than her.  Erik has been training for a charity boxing match so I believe he rolled once and then boxed with both Ken and Robert.  I rolled with Ken, Robert, and Claire. 

With Claire I tried to work with her on the concept of maintaining guard and centering up.  Then went into some of the ways that people would pass and what she needs to watch out for.  Hopefully she learned something.

Ken and I had a little five minute battle but I can't think of anything that stands out from it.  Robert gave me a pretty difficult time.  We had quite a few scrambles and it seemed like we'd go from sprawl to half guard often with me on the bottom mostly.  There were several almosts where I'd almost take his back but he'd have me in a tight headlock and he'd push me into side control.  We talked about the sitout and he showed me a cool way to use the sitout from the turtle that I'm going to try to integrate into my game.

For the past week I've been using an app on my phone to keep track of calories.  It's been quite an experience as it has really caused me to focus on my snacking habits and what I've been eating as well as encouraging me to exercise more.  My goal is to drop down to 190 lbs.  I've weighed somewhere between 210-220 since I got out of the Marines and I'm motivated to get rid of the gut.  I've already seen some dramatic results as I weighed myself on Wednesday morning at 211 and Monday morning I weighed 206.8.

I've been swimming a lot more as well as doing some martial art workouts on my own.  Another part of my goal is to prepare for the State Games.  I'm thinking about competing in more than one martial art and depending on the cost and timing, all 4 arts (Jiu-Jitsu, Taekwondo, Judo, and Karate) offered.  I'm definitely doing Jiu-Jitsu.  Taekwondo would probably be my second choice as I have the most experience with it.  After that comes Karate because it's most similar to TKD (although I have some concerns about kata etc).  I put Judo last on my list just because I'm still unsure about several rules and I feel like there is the most potential for injury.