Getting ready for the first match. I was putting the colored belt on strictly to identify me for scoring purposes.
And the gang. A couple of guys had to take off, but this was most of us. Josh won the sword for... I don't know... kicking a lot of butt, I guess. I think he's a ninja, now.
Here's the first match from today. I won 11-0 on points. I did a lot wrong, but I was able to win primarily I think due to size and strength.
Okay, so this was my first tournament. I won one and lost one: Here's the one I lost.
183 lbs this morning. Weigh-ins are this evening. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. I've got the video camera all charged up and ready to go.
We had another promotion tonight. Jeff was promoted to Purple. While my opinion holds no weight, I think he really deserves it. He's very technical and an excellent teacher and example to the rest of us. He's a small guy (I think about 135 in a sweat soaked gi), but moves well against anyone regardless of size. He's also always willing to share a tip or answer a question, no matter how fundamental. So, congrats to him!
Tonight was my last class before the competition on Saturday. Saturday is the 4th Pac NW BJJ Competition. I'm as ready as I'll ever be. I've been training hard, and may surprise some people. But I'm also going in with modest goals. I plan on having a really good time. That's my number one goal. I want to have fun. I can't see how I could possibly fail to achieve this goal. I mean, even if I get choked out in 10 seconds, it's all good... but I'll try like hell to keep that from happening. I'll still do a light workout tomorrow and Friday at lunch, but I'll take it easy. Good luck to everyone else who's competing from our team.
I'm very close to the necessary weight. I'm going to need to drop a few pounds, but it shouldn't be hard to do that. My back feels good, and I am about as uninjured as I've been since I started, feeling really good.
We learned some techniques tonight... ways to transition out of a turtle defense. The arm drag was hard for me, but I think I could make it work if push comes to shove. I tried to pay attention because I do end up guarding from a turtle position fairly often.
Then in lieu of sparring, we rolled light with coach. I tried to be methodical and think about what I was doing. One funny thing that happened was I tried to work on a bait that he showed us, not even thinking that he friggin' showed us that bait. Of course he's not going to fall for it. Ah well, I was just happy to have remembered it.
184 lbs this morning. I've made my target weight. Woohoo! I'll easily lose a couple more lbs before next Friday.
Unfortunately, this weight wasn't lost in the best way. A flu has been working through the house, and while I'm on the good side of it, it wasn't fun. I kept lots of fluids down, but eating was hard. And I missed another day of training. I'm feeling much better today, and look forward to getting back at it tomorrow.
Only peripherally related to BJJ, I got tired of having one of the regular old Blogger templates, so I played around with some clip art I found and customized my blog. Hope it's not too hard on the eyes. I like it a lot better.
Watching this just makes me happy. I'm not sure if it's the music, the production number choreography or what.
185 lbs this morning. No class on Thursdays, but I'm going to hit the gym at lunch and do a 1/2 hour of cardio. My back is still sore, and I want to make sure I rest it, so I'll probably end up doing 1/2 hour on the elliptical. I can push the pace and still be gentle on my lame back. Stupid disc.
I think that, after the tournament, I'm going to take advantage of my health insurance and get to a physical therapist. I want to continue training, but I also want to make sure that I'm making my back stronger and not doing more damage over time. I guess I felt like if I lost weight and worked on my core strength that my back issues would magically disappear. Unfortunately, this hasn't been the case. Pisses me off, really.
First thing, I'm missing class today. Spouse is down with a crud and I'm going to try and make her as comfortable as I can. Not to mention that I slept poorly last night because of the coughing. Hopefully I won't get this, too! I'm focusing my chi (or whatever it is I'm supposed to say in order to sound more mystical).
On the good side, I went to the no-gi class last night. It was really fun, and I learned a couple of good takedowns. Give me 6 more months and I might actually be able to get them to work on an unwilling opponent.
186 lbs this morning. I went to the gym, but only did a light workout, with almost no cardio. Some abs, but mostly just stretching.
Sunday I went to the competition class. Fun, but I'm SO sore today. My thighs are so tight I can hardly walk down the stairs. I went to the gym today and did some abs... about the only part of my body not really sore.
Competition class starts with "a harder workout". Yeah. And then finishes up with 1/2 hour of sparring. I got to work from standing, which was good. I didn't completely stink, but it's pretty bad. I got some good tips, though. I was pretty much done at the end of that class.
But then the regular class started. We worked on the omoplata from earlier, as well as a sweep and a transition to armbar. Between the warmups for this class and the 1/2 hour drilling the omoplata I felt much better by the time we started sparring. I feel like I did pretty well... got a tap on an Americana in my first match. My second match was with Chris who's strong, big, smart and much more technical than me. I pulled guard at first, and it was about 1 minute before I tapped. But the plus side is that he pulled guard, I passed and was able to stay in control the entire rest of the round. I tried to get the Americana, but it wasn't going to work. Still, I felt pretty good about staying out of his half guard, or passing to side control when he'd get it back. I stayed busy, worked to north/south, and generally just tried to stay in control and not give up the dominant position.
The highlight of the day, though, was during open mat. Josh was looking for someone to roll with, and so I offered to go. I pulled guard, then swept him with a basic scissor sweep. He got me into his half guard, but I had an underhook on his far side. I just kept lots of shoulder pressure until he tried to get that arm inside. As soon as he did I locked down an Americana for a tap. What was so great about this is that on 360 days in the year, I'd never tap Josh. But yesterday, I did it twice. We shook hands, started back up. I pulled guard again, tried the same sweep, and while it didn't work the first time, it did the second (I've been working very hard on what JJ Machado calls the "simple sweep"). Once again, he got me caught in his half guard, but left his arm out. So, after that, he was clearly ready to keep going, but I just couldn't do it. I couldn't think of a better way to end the day.
Well, I can honestly say that I've never been as tired as I was yesterday during class. I didn't get sick, but there was a point after my second match sparring that I felt like it was a distinct possibility. Every time I think my conditioning is getting pretty good, I get a nice reality sandwich.
But I feel pretty good about the class, even though it's difficult to recall much of it. Honestly, after warm-ups, I was sparring on an empty gas tank and critical thinking sort of shut down. I think that getting one more class on Tuesday will really help me take my conditioning to the next level. It's good to see the guys in class who never seem to get tired. Their endurance is so good that they seldom get really tired and even then they recover fast. That's the goal.
Weight wise, I'm at 186 and dropping. I feel great. Woke up a little dehydrated, even though I drank lots of water in the evening after class. At this rate, I'll probably get into the 170's by sometimes in May... June at the latest. I'm at about 16% body fat, so I've got plenty of fat left to burn. I think at that point I'll start weight training again at lunch and work on strength. I don't want to get too much smaller. My big, square, Norwegian head would just look too funny on 175 lbs body.
After having had Sunday off, it was good to get back in. We learned how to do the omoplata from cross guard.
The setup was pretty much like an armbar from guard. I start from guard by securing my opponents right wrist with my right arm, and then reaching through and grabbing his right leg with my left arm, moving into crossguard. Here, I lift my hips and rotate around, twisting his arm around my leg and driving forward until he's flat. If he doesn't go all the way down, I can twist until he's flat. Then I bend my legs away from his body, scoot my hips out, control his upper body and lift my hips to get the tap.
Bill taught me and the guy I was drilling with how to transition from the omoplata to a heel hook. Very cool.
Sparring was good. I sparred with three different people. The first was one of the females in the class. I was able to get her on an Americana from mount, and I guess that really pissed her off. In her words, I saw her angry eyes. I hadn't seen them before and was genuinely worried that I'd hurt her or something... of course, while I'm worrying about that, she's working on a guillotine. Fortunately, it was all good. She wasn't mad at me as much as she was just showing her competitive side. I'll say this, though... I'd hate to see her REALLY angry! Yeesh!
Everything else was good. I'm going to begin going to the competition class on Sundays, and I'm going to also make as many of the Tuesday, no-gi classes that I can. I think I'm in good enough shape now that 4 days per week won't be detrimental, and I could use the time on the mats. More classes means more sparring.
Literally. My back just really got bad last week. My herniated disc was throbbing and the sciatica came back. While I've accepted that my back is usually sore, I don't typically lose much range of motion, and once I'm warmed up it ceases to be an issue. Well, not last week. On Friday the warmups were murder, and the backflips were killing me. And then we moved into techniques from the triangle. Oh boy. So, for the first time since I started training, I abstained from sparring. I ended up taking Sunday off, too. But I'm glad I did. I tried to rest my back as much as possible, and it's definitely on the mend. I felt pretty good today, only asking not to get stacked up in sparring in my last match.
So, I'm back at it, looking forward to competing in Seattle on April 28th at the 4th Pac NW Jiu-Jitsu tournament. Yay! I'm going to compete at 184 lbs. So, with this in mind, I went and bought a scale a few weeks back in an effort to make sure I make weight. I'm doing really well. When I started training last November, I was at least 210 lbs. This morning, I weighed in at 188, and I still have plenty of... let's call it "mass" to spare. I'm more concerned with body fat % than actual weight, as I'm not really interested in dropping water weight, and last time I checked, I'm at about 18%, so I could easily stand to drop another 10 lbs or so.
Anyway, enough about that. Class was fun. All the guys were back from the Pan Ams in California. I heard there were over 2000 competitors. Damn. The guys all did well, and Coach got Bronze in his black belt division.
At work today... around 1pm, I went to the gym. I don't typically go down there at that time, but I try to do some kind of cardio work, whether it's on the elliptical, the rowing machine, the treadmill. I get bored, so I try to mix it up. But at 1pm, they were doing this spin class. It's like stationary biking, but lots of interval training with varying resistance. I'd never done it before, and so I decided to give it a shot. Pretty fun, but I don't think I'll do it on class days again. All of that just to say that warm-ups today weren't all that severe, but my legs were really tired, and I couldn't hang with the leg lifts. I kept up on everything else, including the crunches, so my core strength is definitely improving.
The technique we learned today was a clock choke, when a guy turtles up. So, for the description, my opponent is turtled up and I'm on his left side. I'll reach around with my left hand, making sure I go over his arm, not under. If I go under, his arm will block the choke. So, over with my left hand and then get a firm grip on his lapel, feeding it with my right hand if necessary. Then I'm going to control his right arm with my right arm to prevent him from sitting out and escaping the choke (and potentially taking my back). Now I'm going to sort of pin my right hip to his left shoulder, being careful not to rotate my hips too far either over or under and compromising my base... and losing the choke. Then, just walk around, with my feet extended out like the hands of a clock, until he taps, ultimately working until my head is on the ground next to his right shoulder.
The escape is to either sit out, or turn into the choke and re-establish guard. Both of these are made possible by not keeping my hip low and maintaining constant pressure on his shoulder.
Sparring was fun. I focused on guard, working my sweeps and from the top working the Americana. I tried the clock choke twice, but couldn't make it work for me. In my last match, I paired up with Todd (another white belt) and worked from guard. I tried to sweep him and came damn close a couple of times. I think that if I could get just a little better about coordinating my arms, legs and hips all at once. I also did a much better job from underneath his side control. I got half guard back more than once, at no point did I let him push me flat and I kept good control of his hips, creating space to breath and work. On the not so rosy side, he choked me once. In my zeal to maintain my position, I gave up my back and got caught in an RNC! But, of course, as a white belt, I feel obligated to make several tactical errors per class.
My back seems okay. A little stiff, but nothing worse than normal. I'm working on stretching every night, which I haven't done in a while. I think that if I can improve my flexibility through my legs and hips, it will relieve some of the pressure on my lower back. Hopefully. Seems to be working so far.
