Wednesday. And learning new things.

Far smaller class than Monday. Maybe 16? 18? not sure, didn't bother to count. My back is bothering me tonight, which isn't altogether unusual, but it's worse than normal. Feels like a line of muscles down the right side of my spine is all bunched up being difficult. Grr.

Very abbreviated warmup. We didn't do any stretches, so I scoot to the front of the line for hip escapes down the mat so that I can stretch my legs and my back while everybody finishes theirs.

Pairing up. No small guys. Gah. End up with a guy called Tynan (spelling? oh well) who is pretty much the image of the type of person I've been doing my best to avoid. Hair chopped to stubble, only a few inches taller than me, but probably 15kgs heavier (in muscle), loads of tattoos. Some of them are actually pretty cool. I've been avoiding guys like this, because stereotypically they just seem more likely to be gung-ho about it, and more likely to hurt me as a result. Oh well. We shall see if I die.

Drilling the same three moves from Side control that we did on Monday while John and Dale teach them to the new guys. First shoulderlock Tynan does on me is cranked rather quickly. Ow. My shoulder sounds like bubble-wrap, which isn't entirely unusual, but it was reasonably loud. It's gonna be a long night huh? I'm really not looking forward to doing sparring stuff with this guy.

When it's my turn to do techniques, I'm having a little difficulty getting enough pressure to finish them, as he's resisting fairly solidly, and my back is limiting how much I can turn my body to finish the twisty ones, specifically the one that comes after 'up and crush'. Oh well.

Sparring rounds! ... huh what? It's only been about 25 minutes? Well, OK. 1 minute rounds of side control. Didn't I mention that I wasn't looking forward to that? Starting underneath.

First round: My goal for this round is to not die. Immediately up onto my side, and he flattens me back out. Then up onto my side again and there is absolutely all kinds of space for me to sneak a leg through. Half guard. Re-set. He learns, nowhere near as much space, but he can't keep me flat enough to try anything. Round in circles. That went rather better than I expected.

On top. He's really pretty strong, and pretty much just disposes of me with upper body strength. 3 times. Meh.

I kind of feel like we did another two rounds here, but if we did they really weren't very interesting.

Ok. Time to learn something new. Like how to escape from under side control. I like that. Make a frame with your forearms to get partner as low down your body as you can, then bridge. Use space underneath you to get onto your side facing your partner as you drop back to the mat. Hip escape out backwards. Bring near-side knee up to your elbow, so it now should be underneath your partner. Pivot your body to line back up, get that leg the rest of the way through and secure your guard.

Neato. Drilling. We both seemed to be ending up with one arm in and one arm out when our partner did the escape. Wasn't sure whether this was a problem or not, but after a little bit of thinking it's pretty obvious that this is more because of the guy on top leaving his arm there. It's probably also bad for the guy on top, because I see triangles floating around there. I don't know HOW to do a triangle, but I'm fairly sure that one arm in and one arm out is triangle land.

More 1 minute drills, this time with the goal of actually accomplishing the escape. Which I didn't actually manage to do right. I believe my problem was not getting my hips out far enough, and constantly finding my hip / leg / knee blocked off when I tried to scoot it through. Once again never really threatened, but disappointed I couldn't manage the escape.

On top, and credit Tynan, because even though he knows he can throw me away, he actually tries to work the escape. Which he didn't make work either. Better pressure this time on top and I only lose top spot once, although we did have to stop a couple of times for crashing into other pairs.

John says we're adding something to it for after you get back to guard. That'd be a technique from guard. Woo hoo! Lets see what it is? A sweep right.... wrong. It's an escape. That you do while the other guy is in your guard. Well OK. Basically, you're in guard with one hand on the back of his neck and the other on his other arm. His head will be roughly on your chest. Use your legs to push him lower down your body, then open your guard up and wriggle backwards further. Now he should be right down near your stomach. Straighten your leg on the side where you have his arm, bring the other one up as high as possible, then post back with the hand that was on his arm. Scoot backwards and get to your feet / knees / whatever. Just like the stand up drill we do in warmup.

Drilling that a bit. Then a one minute drill that was vaguely amusing. Start on one side of the mat, in guard. Person on the bottom has to try to do the escape (why are we escaping our own guard again?) while the other person has to stay in guard (why are we trying to stay in our opponents guard again?). If you get to the other side of the mat, go back to the other side and start again. Amusing stuff. Basically laps across the mat with the person on the bottom wriggling backwards and the guy on top staying there. Good exercise, but not a whole lot of escaping going on.

Drink break, then more side control sparring to finish up. I'm really tired you know. First time that's happened for a fair few weeks. Hard work being underneath, but I'm spending most of my time on my side, so the pressure isn't too bad. He hasn't seemed to work out how to flatten me effectively. Definitely not getting my hips out far enough and finding myself blocked off as a result.

On top. He's getting a little tired, and a whole lot less explosive as a result. I think I managed to not lose the position at all this round, but we did have to reset about 3 times due to finding ourselves off the mat / in a wall / in another pair. Kinda scary ending to the round, because we ran into another pair and one of them rolled onto the back of my neck, which also did an imitation of bubble-wrap popping. Apparently no serious damage.

One more time, but this time you're allowed to try to mount (although you just reset if someone gets mount).

Underneath again, and I'm really pretty wrecked now. He suddenly feels a whole lot heavier. He immediately gets mount. Oh, yeah gotta stop him doing that. Still doing a reasonable job staying on my side, but never really looked like getting out. He tried for mount again, but this time my legs were in the way. Ha. I learn. He tried to isolate my arm right near the end, but he didn't have anywhere near good enough position, and even the size difference wasn't enough for him to get it.

On top one more time, and we're absolutely all over the mat as he tries to wriggle out and I just try to stay on top. Crashing into people, crashing off the mats. I think we re-set 4 times just because of obstacles. Amusing.

Really tired. My back hurts. My shoulders hurt (from drilling). Great class, really happy. I think we might have done 10 minutes worth of sparring stuff spread out over the last half hour of class, and considering I was with a guy as solid as he was, I'm pretty happy with how it went.

Great success. Hope my back isn't too bad in the morning. Heat packs tonight, as that's what my physio says should be good for it.

Oh. Just for entertainment value, while we were drilling the basics, Dale and another 4 stripe white belt were drilling flying armbars in the middle of the mat. Because that's what you do in the middle of a class full of beginners right?