Good day

After a week off, I was excited about going back to class. I brought my friend Stephen with me, who’s visiting from out of town. He’s never done jiujitsu but wanted to check it out. So of course we ended up doing some quite technical things. He had fun, though.

We didn’t do a warm-up, I guess since there’s an hour-long kettlebells class on Mondays before BJJ class. I haven’t tried kettlebells yet—I confess I’m a little intimidated—so if anyone (especially my fellow chicks) has anything to say on the subject, please comment away.

Class focused on spider guard and some techniques from side control. (I’m going to put all the techniques below a cut in this and future posts, as I’m mainly writing them down for my own good. If I want to highlight a technique I’ll put it in the main body of the post.)

I rolled twice, with Chris and Steven. Didn’t do so well against Chris. Near the end of the round, he tried to take my back and had me sort of on my side in a chokehold. I wasn’t tapping. So he added a body triangle. First time feeling that one—I thought my head was going to pop off.

My second roll was awesome, judging by the high fives I got afterward. Jonathan and Blake were shouting feedback and encouragement, telling me to breathe, relax, escape, and recover position. I was able to posture up in Steven’s guard a few times and think I semi-successfully resisted one follow-up attempt to break me down again. I upaed successfully after a couple tries. He got me under side control and tried to suck my arm out for an armbar; I got it back.

Steven said afterward that he hadn’t been going light. I’m taking that with a grain of salt—I’ve seen him roll with other students and he probably could have shut me down completely if he really wanted to—but he and the others genuinely thought I’d done well. Blake gave me some feedback on remembering to upa correctly and to look for the kimura more often; sometimes it’s as simple as remembering to relax and recognize the opening. He also mentioned that as I improve my game, I should try not to telegraph my moves and start faking openings to put my opponent off-balance.

So that was a good day, best I’ve had in a while. Also! Jonathan said he might have found a few girls. He joked that I would’ve gotten this good earlier if I’d had a few girls to roll with. It’s more realistic for me to roll with guys and I wouldn’t want to be paired with another girl all the time, but it’d be nice just to have other chicks around. Hope they come check out class.

Techniques below the cut.