Routine

5:30-5:45p: Warm-ups / standard drills. Short. Sweet. Fast paced jog. Good.

5:45-6p: Sweep / pass the guard. Having trouble remembering... Got swept by a Purple. He grabbed my left sleeve cuff and would not let go...Errr...I couldn't break his grip. He managed to work to his knees and set up the take down. Game over. Got a new White Belt next. He's young, strong, athletic...former college football player. Just passed a Blue Belt's guard. I stepped into his guard. He tensed up. Worked a standard guard break to knee slide pass. Didn't take long. He wasn't too happy though. Purple stepped into my guard. Same guy as my first round. He eventually passed. Have no answer to the torreando. While in line I chatted with the new White Belt football player. He just got worked over by a Purple who had him in spider. He seemed a bit frustrated. Wanted to know how to counter. I couldn't help but chuckle. Dude...you've been here 5 days and you think I can explain how to break a Purple's spider grip and pass his guard in a one minute discussion? I showed him how to break the grip, but warned him that a Purple would just shift to something else. Explained that the actual answer to his question is mat time. Nothing beats mat time.

6-6:30p: Technique. Kesa gatame escapes. Three variations. The first I sort of recall from self defense class. The second and third escapes were new. Simple and very effective. Only problem is I don't recall the last time anyone had me in kesa gatame. Professor said Judo folks like to use it.

6:30-7p: Rolls. 4 six minute rounds. Got a Purple, two Blues, and a White. Got tapped by a Blue - arm bar that started from technical mount - I think - but ended up from his guard. I thought I was going to escape. Tapped the White from mount, but not until after he had me in the strangest bear hug after I set up butterfly guard. Took me 2+ minutes to escape. Then after finally escaping he was gassed and needed a couple minutes to recover. I was sort of ticked that I couldn't figure out how to escape the bear hug. Pretty much got worked by the colored belts the rest of the time. None of my bread and butter sweeps were working. Passed with Torreando countless times. Found myself in turtle a lot. Forced to play a little inverted guard several times as a means to escape north-south. The only good thing about that was side control defense seemed solid enough to force transition to north-south. Popped my knee when a Blue passed. Made a loud snap. Felt strange, but no pain. Knee feels fine now. Don't think it was a bad pop. Anywhoo...not impressed with my performance tonight, but not disappointed either. Pretty routine. That's a good thing.

Dropped by Gayton's tonight to pick up a couple tickets to tomorrow's RMMA fight. It's his pro debut. Defending the 185lb title. He's a solid Purple who walks around at 210+ or so. He looked real thin tonight. Hadn't seen him in a couple months. Can't imagine cutting 25 lbs for a fight. Noor is fighting too. He's a new Blue and it will be his MMA debut. I'm supposed to fly out tomorrow night. But I got an e-mail from Continental saying my flight might be delayed or cancelled. The plane is coming from Houston, which is expected to get snow through the night up to noon tomorrow. I'd love to go home for the weekend, but watching Shawn and Noor isn't a bad alternative if I can't get out of town.