Thursday, September 16, 2010

5:15 to 8:30p

5:15-5:30p: New Orleans traffic is hard to predict. Same distance from work to the gym. Left work at the same time (5pm). But Tuesday it took 45 minutes to get to class. Today? 15 minutes. Oh well. Stretched a bit. Did 10 gi pull-ups. Fingers really didn't like that. Co-workers Mike (Purple Belt) and Aaron (Blue Belt) showed up a bit early. Aaron and I rolled for a few minutes, but didn't have much time. Had trouble maintaining posture.

5:30-5:45p: Warm-up and drills. Mike led. Bunch of non-standard stuff mixed in with the usuals. Did hopping push-ups down the mat from wheel barrel. Thought there was no way I'd be able to do that. Surprised myself.

5:45-6p: Sweep / pass the guard. Got into Aaron's guard first. We struggled for quite a while. Almost swept me many times. Had vice grips on my cuffs. Gi far too long... I eventually called a stalemate and got back in line. Got into the new (to our class) small gal's guard second. Worked with her a bit, but passed to half guard and then side control. Tried to do it very technically with minimal pressure. Lev (2nd day white belt) came into my guard. He stepped up, so I hooked and implemented a sweep to mount we learned last night. A tall Blue Belt got into my guard next. Flower sweep almost right away. Another move from last night! Mike (Purple Belt) was next. He was about to pass when Professor Matthias called time.

6-6:30p: Technique. Combos. Worked simple stack pass to side control. Person on bottom hooks under to turtle or elevator and recovers guard. Then added response to turtle to avoid getting pulled into guard. Sprawl. Swim in the cross face. Reach around back and control opposite leg. Step around and stay low while securing gi lapels from behind. Finally, added the hooks and cross collar choke finish. Hadn't seen the cross collar choke before. I've always gone for bow and arrow from that position and with that grip. Good to know another choke that doesn't require giving up the double hooks.

6:30-7p: Rolls. Got Mike (Purple Belt) first. Good roll. Fairly hard. He caught me with an arm triangle. I saw it coming a mile away. Thought I knew what I needed to do to defend, but couldn't execute. Managed a mount escape and reversal. Then an armbar escape and reversal. Time called. Mike said he was pretty close to gassed. I was breathing hard, but not too bad. I sat in an air conditioned office all day. He was in the field, walking miles.

Got Lev (2nd day White Belt) next. Mostly a teaching roll. Reviewed basic posture within the closed guard, starting grips, and basic break. Swept him to mount or guard followed by guard pass and side control a few times then allowed the reversal just to keep us moving. Also caught him with a very slow front gi cross choke from guard just to introduce him to "danger." I remember when Mike (Purple Belt) caught me with that same choke on my 2nd day of class. Haven't been caught with that submission since...hopefully Lev won't be caught again either.

Got another White Belt last. Didn't catch his name, but tonight was his 5th class. Similar to the last roll with Lev.

7p-8:30p: Day two of kickboxing. Started with 15 minutes of jumping rope. That's not easy! Coordination all out of whack. Good way to warm-up. Stretched a bit. Then put on the gloves and spent an hour on the heavy bag. 1 - 5 with front and back kicks. Goal was to work on technique and get in as many reps as possible. Be creative with combos. Half way through Coach Wayne introduced a front foot pivot to back leg chop kick. (That description is probably way off...but I don't know what they call it. See it in MMA all the time though.) Had difficulty maintaining posture/balance and with the angle of the strike on the heavy bag. After a while I started feeling a strain on my ACL. Moved back to the familiar...

Forgot to stretch after class tonight. Bad me. Iced the right ACL after class though. Feels fine, but I'll probably take it easy with that kick until I'm more coordinated / conditioned for the kickboxing stuff. It's quite a different type of workout than BJJ.

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