DL Day 7

Open mat. Started with standard class stretch and warm-up routine, but solo. I probably look strange warming up by myself when almost everyone else dives into rolling, but hey...I'm too old to dive in cold and I still gas during warm-ups so it's real exercise to me. After 20 minutes and a lot sweat, I noticed a new guy looking around bewildered. Chris said it was his day. Open mat on first day? Cool. Decided to spend some time showing him things I wish someone had shown me before being thrown to the wolves in a real class.

Chris is 6'4" and 210lbs. Wrestled through high school. Now a NAVY corpsman. We started with standard stretches. Then spent a fair amount of time on the hip escapes. Explained closed guard, open guard, half guard, side control, and mount. Then showed him two guard break techniques and a couple passes. Worked those a bit. Then I introduced bottom resistance and explained my goal from closed guard (break posture, balance, create angles, look for sweeps and submissions). We ramped up the intensity a bit and by the end of the hour, Chris was able to pass my guard without too much trouble (...sigh...). Before calling it a day, we discussed side control goals for defense and offense and I introduced knee on belly and mount.

Knee feels ok. Not great. Not bad. Just ok. I stopped one guard pass attempt due to awkward pressure on the knee. No pain, but I knew that if it went any further I'd be hurting. Plan to stay away from sparring and some technique/drills for at least another week.

Oh... 201lbs after workout (no gi). Amazing. That's 19 lbs since starting jits 4.5 months ago and 24 lbs since June 8th when I logged a 5lb weight increase. Doesn't look like I'll have too much trouble making the 207.5 threshold (with gi) by November 13th.