Grading night ...

... was absolutely nuts. I didn't count, but if there wasn't 50 people in the room then it would have been pretty close. The concept of grading night appears to be pretty much random rolling with as many people as you can manage. The down side is that there is mat space for about 8 pairs and there was a fair few more than that going most of the time. Chaos!

In an ideal world I wouldn't have trained. My back has been doing that thing it does where it goes all wonky and I can hardly stand up straight. That's not entirely unusual and I do know how to mostly fix it with stretches and freeing up the muscles responsible, but it normally takes a week or so before I'm good to go again.

Grading night however is a special occasion, so I went anyway and ended up managing 3 different rolls that all went 7-8 minutes or so with Dale, a guy called Adam and last with Lee.

These were all pretty fun too despite me pretty much nursing my back through them. Dale let me play and prodded me in the right direction when I forgot things that I'm supposed to know. He's going to be a good coach one day. So I spent some time on top in side control, messed up a Kimura, managed to get his back when he escaped, spent some time there trying to choke him and eventually ended up losing that too. A little while under mount (don't remember how we got there) and he was prodding me to do the escape (singular) that I know, which I'm having problems getting to actually work. Note to self, practice mount escapes. Finished when he tried to apply a triangle from mount (which I don't know how to defend properly) and my solution was to roll him off me (which I don't know how I managed) but that really just ended up with me falling into a triangle anyway. A little bit of struggle ensued with me trying to not get triangled. Which obviously didn't work. Fun! Tired already! Took a break to stretch my back out and Dale found someone else to roll with anyway.

Adam is a 2-stripe white belt who's only a few inches taller than me but rather more solidly built. This one was pretty good too. He pulled guard to start with and I did a reasonable job of not waving my arms around and eventually getting decent posture. Attempted to pass a couple of times and then somehow ended up in half guard. He rolled me over, and then we ended up having to move 3 or 4 times in the next minute to avoid other pairs. He eventually passed to knee on belly which was an interesting first for me, if solidly uncomfortable. He tried to get arms out of me a couple of times and failed, then decided he was going to make me tap my squishing me with his knee. That's pretty mean but also didn't work. I think his knee was down a fair bit too low to be really doing the damage he wanted. I somehow managed to sneak out and ended up under side control. He was trying to Kimura me when I managed to jam my own thumb in my eye (ow! how clumsy am I?) and that was the end of that. Good fun though. Thanks Adam.

Lee last up, and this was the most interrupted roll I've ever had. It was also pretty back and forth. I seem to be getting a handle on getting to the mat in reasonable positions. Started on top with side control. Hunted some armlocks for a bit, then managed to find my way to mount(!) where I was able to stay for a little while without actually achieving much. He eventually escaped when I tried to armbar him and ended up in my guard. At this point I got kicked in the head. Then I got elbowed in the head. Then I got kicked in the head again. We finally found some free space on the mat and I tried a sweep which didn't work, and briefly a guillotine which also didn't work. There was an armbar floating around that I only noticed after it was gone, and then he finally managed to posture up and was halfway through passing when a halt was called.

The official part of the evening was four blue belts spending the next 50 minutes getting beat up. They started with other blue belts and got rotated through fresh opponents for 5 rounds of 4 minutes, then ended up with the 3 senior purples and Matt who worked them over good for the next 5 rounds. One of the guys in particular was rolling like a complete dick, slapping ears, poking them in the ribs. I can't say I really approve, but who am I to complain?

After the 50 minutes of watching guys get beat up it was speech time and then they handed stuff out. All the guys from fundamentals get a stripe. Hey wait, that's me. I have a stripe. I must admit it's kind of silly to be putting a stripe on a belt I haven't actually worn yet (I bought a gi last week and we're still regarding each other with an uneasy distrust..) but that doesn't mean I'm going to be giving it back or anything. The little blue stripe apparently means we're qualified unlikely to explode and are now allowed to train with the big kids. Sweet.

This was followed with lots of more experienced white belts collecting more stripes, a few blue belts getting some stripes then by another little speech and the several purple belts collecting two stripes of their own. I wouldn't have a clue who got what because I'm short and was standing near the back of the group. Damn tall people.

One more speech and the rather tired looking blue belts were presented with their well-earned purple belts, along with a fifth guy who couldn't participate tonight because his arm was in a sling. Well done guys!

That wrapped stuff up, apart from some photos and announcements. There's no classes until the 4th of January (boo!). This is probably a good thing, because today I'm practically a cripple. Note to self, no rolling when my back is all screwed up. Liberal applications of deep heat and my stretches should have me up and about in no time.