More side control. First drill was to sweep from the bottom, at a thinking speed, with no muscle based on the Uki’s arm position. I kinda hate these drills because my game is very dependent on my op’s movements, but I also find them helpful because i can think thru the position, explore my options, and experiment without jeopardy.
Second drill was to let Uki put me in a very bad position, then try to sweep from bottom side. Theory here is that you’ll never have to escape from perfect position. MTP put me in some really “interesting” positions. Double gift wrap with a leg weave, Reverse Guillotine blocking a hip, ect. Again, working at thinking speed.
When it was time for rolling MTP and i worked more on his purple belt test. We drilled his mount submission and escapes, mount maintenance theory, guard passes, back escapes and submissions. His test is next Thursday, so he’s starting to get excited/nervous.
Really cool thing happened tonight. A couple of months ago i ran into a guy in the grocery wearing some Origin hunting gear. I struck up a conversation with him and asked if he also did BJJ. He said no, but that he was looking for a school. I told him about our school (which is local to him and he didn’t know about) and he was interested. I told him the class schedule and gave him my number. We texted for a while and he was working on getting his schedule aligned. I hadn’t heard from him for a while, but he showed up to all levels tonight. He’s been coming to the Monday fundamentals class for several weeks and decided to start coming to the all levels class on Thursday. He’s lost some weight since i saw him last and he was really excited to come to a more advanced class. He seems like a good guy. Hopefully he lasts.
Open Mat was 2 hours drilling with MTP on his purple belt and helping some of the white belts getting ready to test for Blue the same night. Again, good “'Ole Day” vibes.
We have a female student who came to us from another academy. They were a competition school, so she has a very different game than ours. She’s fast and aggressive rolling, but her fundamentals need work. She leaves a lot of space when moving/transitioning. We gave her the nickname “Bully”, which is hilarious because she’s the nicest girl.
She’s had issues with work getting to class to prep for her test, so I opened the gym at 0530 today to drill with her. We worked Guard passes, side control escapes, subs, and mount takes, then back submissions and escapes.
Thursday was MTP’s purple belt test. We also had two team members, including Bully, test for blue. MTP killed his test. We were on the mat for about an hour.
After tests it came time for shark tank. 20min, new op every 1 min.
The head BB of our gym system came up to administer one of our purple belt’s brown belt test today. One of our brown belts who moved to a different gym also came. Head BB is a small dude who specializes in hidden Jiu Jitsu. Brown belt is a big dude who doesn’t roll like it.
We started with 1 hour of open mat. Rolled with the prodigal brown bent first, then the purple belt coach at our affiliate. Not much to report. I defended well and didn’t get sub’d to many times. I’m so rusty from knee surgery and not making class due to work. Felt good to get some good rolls in tho. Also rolled with another black belt and got smashed, but it was a really fun roll.
Then head BB put on a 2hr seminar. Mostly q&a. I asked for some help with my half guard and we also covered a good sequence from KOB to baseball choke, transitioning to a North South Ezekiel, then to a NS kimura.
After THAT it was test time. New brown did exceedingly well. ~2hrs on the mat and he did it all from memory. He really raised the bar for everyone.
After test, it was shark tank time. Poor dude was whipped, but he stuck in there and made it thru. Head BB said he hadn’t seen a better test.
