8:50 to 10:30a

8:50-9a: Purchased Saulo's Jiu Jitsu Revolution 1 series. Getting ready to head back to New Orleans for work (depart 9/12) and I'll try to watch this series as often as I can after workouts. Stretched.

9-9:15a: Open Mat. Solo warm-up / standard drills routine. Jogged, hip escapes, core work, etc.

9:15-9:30a: Mike (Purple Belt and UNIJJ manager) knew I've been having trouble with side control postures and escapes so he called me over and showed me a few things. One is a real clever hand fighting technique that frustrates the opponent's cross face attempts. Once they give up and take arm over your body, follow and lock it down to mat via elbow and hip escape. Another technique includes walking hips away to create some space. Might walk in circles for a while, but also try to swim in an underhook and bring head and other elbow into chest before bringing knee in for the shrimp to guard recovery. I'll definitely be working on these.

9:30-9:45a: Worked with a visting two-stripe brown belt (from Jersey). Big guy. Much bigger than me. Showed me a few things about maintaining side control and really imobilized me in the process (doesn't take much). At one point he had me in open guard. I hooked under his right leg and began to stack for a pass with my right arm keeping his left thigh open. He warned me to watch out for the triangle. He was able to pull my right arm off his left thigh and break my posture without much trouble. Mike stepped in and showed something his son does to prevent the triangle. Same basic idea I had (keep the hip down while stacking), but switch the angle of the grip and straight arm the inside thigh portion of the gi to the mat. The Brown Belt couldn't shoot the triangle. The Brown Belt also showed me a cool trick to secure side control survival posture that makes perfect sense but had never occurred to me. When someone passes my guard and takes side control, too often I am late setting up side control survival posture. As a result, I'm often caught with the arm on the side under control getting trapped up above the opponent's knee and away from my side. He showed me that all I need to do is step and hip shift into my opponent's other knee, which often creates enough space needed to drop the shoulder/elbow back to the side and mat. Nice.

9:45-10:15a: The few guys who showed up for open mat didn't seem to want to roll much. They spent a lot of time catching up on MMA / BJJ gossip and generally socializing. I listened in a bit and took time to work more core and neck drills. 50 reps each of nods and nos plus 25 circles to the left and 25 to circles to the right. Lots of leg lifts. Hip shifters. Crunches. Lots of stretching. Etc.

10:15-10:25a: Andy (Blue Belt) hurt his thumb earlier rolling with the big Brown Belt. I wasn't sure how badly he got hurt, but since time was ticking away and the other guys were clearly done rolling, I asked him if he wanted to work a bit before calling it a day. He said his thumb was tender, but he'd go for a spin. I don't remember a lot about the roll other than I seem to have trouble with smash passes, even when my opponent seems to give them to me. Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but it shouldn't take me 2 minutes to work a pass when I have my opponent's knees together and on the mat. I eventually passed and began working grips. I thought I had an opening to transition to mount. As I threw my leg over, Andy raised a leg and fought the passing leg with his hurt hand. The defense worked...stopped the pass to mount...my shin slammed into his half guard (err...groin). He blurted out in pain. I thought it was the devastating blow to the groin, but it was his thumb (cup saved the nads). Thumb swelled up right away. Although I didn't do anything wrong, I still feel bad. He's going to be out for a while.

10:25-10:30a: Stretched a bit more and called it a day.

204lbs after workout (no gi). Haven't been this light since age 19 or 20. Crazy to imagine but if I can remain healthy, it's quite possible that I'll be in the best shape of my life on my 35th birthday (next May).