I'm baaaaaaaack!

So for the next three months I'm a University student again. That means no going to work, and full time study. That means morning classes and absolutely no trouble getting to BJJ classes! Hooray! Looks like I missed some stuff.

It's amazing how much better you feel training when you haven't spent all day at work. Great stuff.

Very abbreviated warmup because the kids ran overtime. Bad kids bad. Running in circles waving our arms around, running in circles touching the floor, sprawls, then burpee-sprawls. Hip escapes down the mat x 2 and switchout / standupy things.

Grabbed Lee for drilling fun. First up is a side control escape circuit. Hip escape, regain your guard, switchout (escape your own guard!) and then shoot for a single leg to side control. Then go around in circles. Did I mention it's crowded? Many many collisions just for entertainment value.

After that we switched to a guard pass drill. Do my one and only guard pass (knee in butt, step out to the other side to break the guard, hook the leg up onto your shoulder, stack up and slide to the side into side control..), move to mount, guy underneath escapes with a bridging rolling upa thing, passes guard etc.

Then, new stuff! (How excitement!). A different guard pass! Breaking the guard in the same way, but instead of going up and stacking, continue to shove that leg down, then stick your knee through, pin it down with your shin and hook your foot under to make sure it's stuck. Hook the other leg with one arm, crossface with the other. Roll onto your hip next to victim (partner? heh) and swing-kick your leg across, then switch legs to normal side control.

I think I might have gotten to drill that twice. Maybe 3 times. Handy stuff. Just to prove we're completely random, we then go and try our three submissions from mount. Once each. That's repetition for you! Once! Happy to notice that I did a not completely hopeless armbar to the side I normally do hopeless ones. Go me.

John breaks us up to see another couple of neat tricks. Like how you can armbar someone when they don't wave their arm around asking for it. Mostly by digging your hip under their arm to pop it up for you. I got to do this twice. Go me. Also, how to react if you try figure 4 from mount and they roll towards their arm to defend it. This one I already really suspected, but as they roll you get halfway to their back and set up for either an armbar if they don't continue to roll or taking their back if they do.

I promptly kicked Lee in the head trying to secure an armbar. Ooops. Sorry.

Next up, we stand up for some fun. Did I mention it's really stupidly hot? I'm melting! Anyway. We're doing takedowns. Specifically, shooting for double-leg takedowns. Basic pointers about this one seem to be that you don't want to put your head down as might seem natural. That would just get you sprawled on. Anyway, drop your level, shoot in so your knee is between their legs, your head generally in their stomach, wrap arms around the back of their knees, drive forwards and turn to the side where your leg isn't. Hopefully get out from their guard before they notice!

We did these for quite a while. I might have even done 10. Then we switched to stand up pummeling drills. Slow at first, then competitively with the goal of getting double underhooks. I'm pretty sure I got the best of this but I also don't think I managed to get a good secure grip.

Suddenly it was the end of class. Which kind of caught everyone by surprise, including John, who apologized because apparently the guys who've been around a while now were supposed to spend the last 15 minutes of class rolling. We'll be doing that Wednesday. Score!