Monday, August 5, 2013

August 1st 2013 - Gi (Just Visiting)

Just returned from our family vacation in Chicago.  I found a school relatively close to my brother in law's place, Randori Jiu-Jitsu.  My wife had our whole week planned out to visit the aquarium, Legoland, and a few museums so the only class I could attend was their Thursday 6 AM class.  For some reason Google did not want to cooperate and gave poor directions.  Finally after driving down the road a little further I found the school with the huge Jiu-Jitsu sign above the door.  Even though I was 10 minutes late I decided to go in anyway and maybe I could at least watch.  However, they were very welcoming and after filling out a waiver form and jumping into my gi I was out on the mats with everyone else.

There were only 4 of us.  A brown belt instructor, Troy, and two white belt men.  They appeared to be working on open guard with a cross collar grip like we had just worked on in Tinguinha's seminar.  Then after I stretched a bit I was included in the class as we started to work some basic spider guard.  Quite a coincidence that the 2 things we worked on I had just practiced in a seminar.

Troy seemed to be feeling me out and trying to determine if I was a dick.  I gave some spider guard tips to the guy I was working with and did my best not to overstep my bounds.  Troy demonstrated the remainder of the techniques on me and then we took turns working with the white belts.  We worked on some good things but it was a little bit of a hodgepodge.  We did a standing guard pass drill, and then some high mount in to taking the back and the bow and arrow choke. 

Then we rolled with five minute rounds.  Troy rolled with me first probably to make sure I didn't have bad intentions.  It was a good idea and a sign of a decent instructor, as you can't be sure if a visitor is coming in to hurt people.  He pulled guard on me and he kept a really good collar grip as I tried to fight off his sweep attempts.  I stayed low and tried to keep my base.  I wasn't able to pass his guard or fight off his grips and eventually he took my back.  I defended for a while but eventually he tapped me with a bow and arrow. 

The white belts didn't really cause me any grief, they were both pretty new.  I pulled guard on the bigger guy and he fell into my omaplata sweep trap and then setup a farside armbar from there.  The other guy was still on his first week of training and he had to quit because he was gassed.

Afterwards we talked a little about the school and other students.  Everyone gave me the compliment that I felt very heavy.  They invited me to come back and were a little disappointed that I wouldn't be a regular.  The bigger guy said he travels to Nebraska often for work and may be able to stop into our school some time, very cool if that happens.  We discussed a little MMA as well, but I'm not very up to date lately.  It was great to get some BJJ in while on vacation and I will most likely go back there the next time we visit family.

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