Tight Joints at 7:30a

Yesterday's class started with a nice slow warm-up. 7:30a class is nice because it's always great to start the day with BJJ. That said, it sure takes a while longer to get the joints moving that early. Felt sooooo tight. Warm-up followed with variations of the muscle sweep and sub transitions. Three days in a row learning variations from the root position (muscle sweep off standing guard break attempt). It's been great. So many options depending on how your opponent approaches the guard break/pass attempt and so many more options depending on their reaction to your response. Love it!

Got a Purple and two Blues for the rolls. 6 minutes with 90 seconds between rounds. Did surprisingly well against the Purple. A couple solid x-guard sweeps and a two or three guard passes, including an x-pass that I've been working on. Rolls with both Blues went better than expected too. A couple more x-passes, x-guard sweeps, a knee push sweep, and two sweeps off a pass (one from spider, the other from lasso). One of the Blues was clearly going light and flow-rolling. Had him in a few bad spots (unusual for this particular blue) and he worked himself out without too much trouble. At one point with the other blue, we were tied up in a knot...almost 50/50ish... I noticed his left leg was caught posting in an odd angle and thought that a slight hip shift, frame, and nudge would make him fall back and allow me to come up on top. Worked just as I imagined it would. Notable because although exhausted I had the presence of mind to recognize the vulnerability, develop an action plan, and implement. Definitely encouraging.

The past few days at UNIJJ have shown me a few areas that need improvement:

1. I'm getting my guard passed too easily. Bailing to turtle seems to be my default. It's very comfortable - I can usually recover open or half guard from turtle - and if it were a tourney, I'd be avoiding the pass points. But I'm starting to wonder if I should force myself to survive/escape side control instead of bailing. My side control escape to guard recovery is terrible. I felt like tapping (nearly puked) from the Purple's side control alone. Miserable.
2. I'm losing position too often. I pass guard or take mount only to loose position to half or open guard far too often. I've been quite impressed with how quickly (and instinctively) my training partners have recovered a guard.
3. My survival/escape skills are slacking. I need to get back to basics and build up.

Oh! World Champ and newly minted Purple Michael Jr. taught today. At 17, he's already an excellent instructor. Check out his 2011 Mundial's highlight vid.