October 2nd - Gi

I decided to attend the final Tuesday evening class last night since I won't be able to make it this Thursday.  The class was relatively small but good with myself, David (Judo brown belt), Mike, and Will in attendance. 

Mike asked if we could work on half guard from the bottom.  We did "The" half guard sweep, as Will put it, first.  I've seen this done many ways and he does it slightly different than I do.  We also did some recovery if the opponent gets you flat on your back.  Finally we went over some 10th planet lock down and some dog fight type stuff.

I rolled with Mike first during open mat and we had some pretty good battles.  He played a lot of spider guard from the beginning.  It's becoming more difficult to deal with as if I get one arm free he can still use the other one to get me off balance.  Grip fighting is huge when fighting with Mike and  We stalemated on our first match and switched partners.

I rolled with Will next and it must have been my day because I felt pretty dominant with him.  Early on I threatened a wristlock from side mount that had him flopping around quite a bit and he eventually got free.  We had a few scrambles but I was able to get some key sweeps and came out on top and mounted him.  From there I worked the americana, he did a great job of keeping me from completing it, but I used it to setup an armbar which worked perfectly and made him tap.

I rolled with Mike again and we started from standing which was a little iffy for me, but since I outweigh him by quite a bit I wasn't as worried about getting hurt as I would have been with Fuji or Adam.  During one of my throw attempts he ended up taking a pretty bad nut shot and had to sit out for a little while.  When we continued he ended up pulling guard and we worked from there.  He almost had a repeat with the bow and arrow choke from Monday night but I was able to defend it with both hands in.  However, he eventually got me into a crucifix and after some fighting he applied a choke from there.

I don't like to get into the politics of the dojo on the blog because a lot of it is kind of petty and I don't need to concern myself with it.  However, I really don't understand why this class was cancelled.  There are other classes going on at the same time with Iaido and the sparring class and they have less students attending them on average.  Is this the Jiu-Jitsu class being treated as the black sheep of the dojo that I've heard about?