Keep on truckin'...

Having Wednesday's class as a confidence- builder, I followed the same mindfulness to training I had the following day. Purple belt Steve took the class but little Steve was prepared to jump in in case none of the higher belts could make it.

Steve's class takes a different flavour as compared to Kevin's and Dante's class. His was more physical in nature, and spends time on cardio, conditioning, and sport-specific exercises, as well as techniques-drilling and sparring.

Steve taught three types of sweeps from the bottom, one involving push-pulls using legs from bottom guard, and two from being caught in side mount short base. One involves cross-facing your opponent while moving your body away from his to create space before you kick your inside leg to provide momentum. The other one involves securing a far underhook and grabbing opponent's shoulder with your near hand whilst moving in to nullify space between the bodies as preparation for a throw using hip bump. That last one was particularly difficult for me during drilling, as my partner keeps on leaving his arm across my back as he throws me. I then land on his arm and his knuckles press on my back ribs, which leaves me short of breath because of my injury. Oh well...

The theme for yesterday's class was about achieving positional dominance thru sweeps and taking the back whilst standing grappling.

I was fortunate that Keith was back in training so we paired up initially in sparring - getting chuckles from the class as some kind of Chuck and Larry. The thing is, myself and Keith had a chat several weeks ago about pairing up for light rolling due to our injuries, which actually went very well. It allowed us to focus more on techniques, rather than going balls to the wall in sparrng. Even in the subsequent sparring matches with others, I kind of set the tone in my mind, which was immensely helpful. Even rolling with purple belt Steve didn't seem too scary as before...