Small World

It was one hell of a hard training day and I am really glad I went. A few notes from my matches. The Brown Belt match was a really good one. The Brown Belt probably outweighed me by at least 70 pounds and was probably twice as strong as me so I had to rely 100% on technique and positioning. I find it very helpful to NOT be able to fall back on using power as it can become a crutch. It is also a dangerous habit for a guy my size because I am not a “big guy” by BJJ “big guy” standards. I will always be paired in the “big guy” group, but I will never be the biggest of the big guys. In fact I am usually the smallest of the “big guys” so that set was particularly useful for me.

The last match was against I Purple Belt with the body type and game that typically gives me a lot of trouble. This was a really fun match. We did a double set because I didnt realize the timer went off until about have way through the second set. You can bet I was keeping my eye on the clock for the next buzzer. I think I lost 5 pounds of water weight in that set alone!

So why is it such a small world? One of the Black Belts I was training with was a guy I trained with wayyyyyy back in the day in a galaxy far far away. We trained together for a short time when I was at Ricardo's in NJ (back in the days when Richardo's was out of Flex Gym). At time he was a Blue Belt and I was a White Belt. It was fun training with him and it is always fun seeing a face that brings back memories.

I also ended up training with someone that knows my step daughter. I didnt know it at the time but apparently he recognized me from the parent student days (man am I old).

All in all a really fun day. We rarly close our gym for the holidays but when we do I might make NJMA my default holiday spot.

Cookie Dough

So apparently sitting on your butt NOT working out and NOT going to class while drinking beer and eating cookie dough = about 7 pounds.

Lot's and Lot's of BS

It seems like all of my posts are catch-up posts so why bother putting it in the title.

Sat The Good Fight

Mike and I went out to Ocean city for The Good Fight. The tournament was much much small then the one in NY. Mike only had one other guy in his division, I had 4 people in my division. When they put out the brackets it was just me and one other guy, but I guess two other Purple belts came out of the wood work so they put us all in one division. There was 1 skinny guy, 1 middle weight, me (a generous medium heavy at 198) and 1 heavy weight claiming to be 215/220 but I suspect he was more in the 225 range. Mike and I both fought at the same time during all of our fights which was disappointing because he didnt have anyone to coach him.

My first fight was against the middle weight and not to sound cocky, but I knew I was going to beat him the second I grabbed onto him. I scored one takedown with an O Uchi Gari but he got back to his feet. I moved him around a little and scored another takedown with the same technique. From there it was guard pass and mount putting me up 11 - 0. I tried to get fancy going for a mounted triangle and then an armlock off the position. He ended up coming up but it made no difference. I finished him with a Kimura from half guard. Not sure when it happened but at some point I hurt my neck and it got stiffer and stiffer as time went by.

My second match was against the heavy weight. I watched his first fight. He fought the skinny guy and scored a takedown with a nice Uchi Mata. Off the takedown he held the skinny guy down in Kesa Gatma for over half the match. Having seen his style I was leery of giving up a takedown and letting him get to a strong position. In retrospect I probably had too much respect for his takedowns. I was moving him around but when he pulled me in for a Russian tie I quickly pulled half guard. All was going well, I got my underhook he worked back to his feet and I hit a Tani O'Tosh, just like I showed that exact sequence in class a few weeks before (actually the class was going through my head as we were going througt the sequence, it was kind of cool). Anyway, I threw the Tani O'toshi pretty hard and he kind of bounced away from me when he hit the mat. He was able to scramble up to his feet and get back on top. I grabbed a half guard but I did not have a good bite and he was able to pass. From there he held me down inside control until he got warned for stalling. I managed to turn to a turtle toward the end but time ran out, he won 3 -0. This was my first tournament loss since I began instructing. It actually feels good to get it out of the way but I really was not happy with my performance. I also was not thrilled with my conditioning. I didnt get tired but it was not in as good of condition as I thought. If it was a Judo match I would have run out of gas.

some catching up

Tue - I made Tue a light training class. I showed a closed guard pass that I have shown once before but find most still have trouble with it. Then I gave them time to drill whatever technique they wanted. This is something we do quite a lot in Judo but it is hardly ever done in BJJ. Some schools have an open mat session, others allow students to stay after class to drill but most do not set aside time during class for students to choose what they want to work on. I really do think giving this time every once in a while is a good idea, but so far I have tried it twice and each time I was disappointed with the outcome. I will have to put a little more thought into what I need to do the next time I want to try this. After the tokui waza time we did 6 min training sets.

Wed - Light cardio workout combined with high rep light weight pulling exercises. Not a very intense workout, just trying to break a sweat and keep the muscles loose for Sat.

Thr - Same theme as yesterday, light cardio and a few high reps low weight exercises, nothing major.

Upcoming Sat - The tournament this Sat is not a big one so my level of motivation is not as high as it was for the NY Open, but I feel good. My conditioning is good and my timing is good, I will try to start getting mentally motivated on Fri. Initially I had a bunch of people expressing interest in this tournament, but I am afraid the interest may be waning.

After Sat - This will probably be the last BJJ tournament I do for a while. After Sat I am going to start putting Judo tournaments back on the calendar.

I am back

Ok, I tried blogging on WordPress for a while and I pretty much hate everything about WordPress so I made the decision to come back to BlogSpot. The WordPress site served its purpose and I will probably continue to post a few things on it but if you want to see my updates this is the site for it.