August 26th - No Gi (Sidelines)

I decided to punish myself by going to class and watching yesterday.  Oh, what a horrible punishment it was.  Conan taught and he had a notebook paper of things that he wanted to work on.  I think he ended up only doing half of the first page.  The theme was techniques off of a failed hip heist.  They did Kimura, guillotine, oma plata, and a triangle.

It was interesting watching other students work ethic and how they worked with their partners.  I haven't seen class from the outside perspective before.  Everyone had the most trouble with the triangle choke which depended on their base arm being way back.  Different partner groups dealt with the problem differently and found ways to get the arm out of the way.

I felt pretty antsy and wanted to get out there but also knew that it wouldn't be long before I was hurt.  I tried to read my new book (Jiu-Jitsu University) when I could.  I even asked Conan a question about a side control defensive posture shown in the book that had to do with blocking the cross face.  This was something I haven't been doing but will start as soon as I come back.

During open mat there were 3 groups of epic battles.  Conan and Tate had a really good match ending with a knee bar ball smash that made Conan tap.  Before that there were a couple of times back and forth that looked pretty close to ending the match.  Adam rolled with Jordan, a wrestler that I've seen a couple of times in class.  Adam pretty much had his way with him but Jordan had some good wrestling and was able to pull of some decent escapes a few times.  Jerad and Sara were the third group and I saw some really good things from her.  I haven't seen her roll much and was pretty impressed by her skill.  I was also impressed with her hair when she took out her hair tie.