Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Blue Belt +1

Today was my first day on the mat since receiving my blue belt last Thursday. As always, I was not feeling it today. I was tired from work and hungry. I don't typically eat after lunch on days I know I will be training. I made that mistake once and almost threw up from drilling knee-on-belly. The stars always seem to align in the worst ways for me. One time I was having neck pain, and of course that day we worked clock chokes.

Today one of the brown belts that has been away for the majority of the summer lead the warm-ups. He like to have us do forward and backward rolls as well as cartwheels. Professor doesn't have us do those. Once professor came on the mats, we went into dilling the Lasso to Omoplata. During the warm-ups, one of the higher ranking blue belts that is about 60 lbs of muscle heavier than I ask if we can drill together. I never turn anyone down, so I said yes.

Because he is so muscular, his technique is modified from how Professor shows us. He is a really nice guy, even though he is a Marine and could probably fold me in half with just his arms. After a few slow  detailed attempts, I give him a little more resistance to test him. Like I said, his technique is not perfect, but he has adapted it to his body and it's effective.

From there we dill a sweep from closed guard and a recover from a transition to side control. The key to the sweep is to maintain control of the sleeve during the transition. For the transition to side control, the key is to control the head and drive it towards the mat using my far arm with the near arm on the bicep.

While drilling, Professor saw us flowing the omoplata so he called us over to show us how to sit onto the arm of a rolling opponent to trap the arm for an armbar or triangle choke. After the first hour, we paired up and rolled. My first partner was the larger more experienced ble belt I drilled with. He was being very patient with me and did not push to hard.

Right about the time he was able to mount me, Professor called time and had us switch partners. I'm not sure how long we flow rolled, but I think Professor saw that I was in a bad spot and sent me a lifeline.

My next partner was a white belt that just received his first stripe today. I was just flowing with him, but he made some fatal errors in his movement, so I capitalized and got the armbar on him. We went again, and I gave him a dominant position, but we rolled into a position that allowed me to get the kimura on him using my body parallel to his and lifting his elbow while his forearm was stuck in my hip area.

I moved to my next training partner. He is probably a full foot or more taller than me, but not that much heavier. We went at it for awhile before he was able to lock the triangle on me. I was able to hold off tapping for a while and I tried to move around to a North-South position, but as I was doing that, he managed to get the arm that was in across his body. I could pull it back and I didn't want to pass out, so I tapped. We went again, but this time I was able to get an armbar. I rolled him to his side as I tried to get to the s-mount position. When I got my leg over his head, he raised up and started to stack me. I reached for his leg and was able to get him flat on his back. He raised his far leg up and over my head (he is so long) but when he pushed me down I brought his arm down with me and he tapped.

After that, I looked up and it was 9:30p. The others were starting to pack up, so I went to pack up and leave also. There was about 12 people there tonight. I think I got some good rolls in. Not to bad for a day that I almost wanted to skip. Right now I have back and shoulder pain, but that is what I get for being old. OSS!

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