Lots of training

Well I've been lucky enough to continue to get to class on a regular basis. Assuming nothing else crazy happens in my life I may even get to train six days a week for the next month. Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays at Maxercise, Thursdays at the Barn, Saturdays at Optimal, and Sunday for the team train at Maxercise.



Saturday was a great class, although there weren't a ton of people there, it was still really tough. Zak led some particularly strenuous warm-ups consisting of lots of that crazy running on all fours drill and lots of bear crawls and mat cleaners which are the worst. I actually felt like I was going to puke afterwards, which is great. I need more of that.



The first class Zak reviewed the basic arm bar from the closed guard. I picked up some details on how the traps the shoulder with his legs. Say you're attacking your opponent's right arm. Instead of going straight for the arm lock, cross your feet over your opponent's right shoulder first and pull him close to you to prevent him from pushing his shoulder back in. I tried this on Sunday against a bigger guy and had a hard time with getting there. I may need to adjust the angle of my hips. After you're there and have the guy sucked in, push on his head and extend your hips and move your leg over his head to complete the arm bar.



The second class Brian taught an awesome entry to the Ezekiel choke. This is my favorite submission ever, not the highest percentage move by any stretch of the imagination but it's pretty darn cool when you get it. Anyway the entrance Brian showed was from the old school double underhooks stacking pass. You have to jack the guy pretty high up, then when he pushes on your knees you trap one of his arms with your leg, use your elbow to force him to a half-turtle position, get the seat belt, then roll or flip to an Ezekiel choke. Its pretty hard to describe exactly, and honestly, I thought I would never use it, but I hit it on Sunday, I just got a little sloppy with the choke at the end and my opponent escaped but it still gave me clean side control.

Training was great, got to train with Tim a couple of times, Zak, Brian, and a blue belt and a white belt. It's always fun to train with the higher belts, and very humbling. Training with the blue belt can be frustrating because he constantly sits back to an open guard which he uses constantly. He's very good at defending the pass but has no real offence from that position. And if you do pass it he basically just crosses his arms, turns to the outside and stalls. The first time I passed somehow, then took his back and submitted him with a rear naked choke. He may have had his chin tucked a little, and I think he got a bit of a chin choke. We shook hands, then he sat back to guard again, giving me two points, not that it matters but it's a bad habit to get into, and one of our less politically correct Brazilian teachers specifically called us a bunch of faggots for doing it. I saw it coming, and immediately bull passed. I went to knee to belly and he tried to bench press me off him. I sat back for the arm bar and accidentally smashed his face with my leg. I swear to god it was an accident. I really hate injuring my training partners, especially the face, having been the recipient of a few permanently irritating injuries myself. I hope there's no hard feelings there, BJJ is a rough sport and I try to be nice when I train, but basically, shit happens.

Anyhoo Sunday's team train at Maxercise was fun. We did the typical maxercise warm up, a two point train, some positional trainings, and regular trainings. I really sucked at pulling guard. I really really really need to work on that and get it cleaner. There's just no excuse for how bad I am at it. I hate starting off the feet and it just puts me in a bad position from the get go. I wouldn't mind doing a whole hour of two point trains just to get better at that.