Thursday with Dante. More people in today compared to yesterday. I guess many are busy with holidays and stuff this summer, including Kevin. Two women graced our mats today, I believe one of them is Dante’s daughter. Welcome.
After warm up, Dante demonstrated another judo takedown that involves a form of ankle reaping. Quite effective and easy but for some reason it felt awkward to me. Falling down is more awkward ad slightly disconcerting as you fall backwards and not forwards nor sidewards as in the other takedowns I’ve learned. I think I sprained my groin muscle during that drilling. Ouch.
Afterwards , drilling a kimura from north-south position. I tell you, this is one nasty position if done correctly. In the north-south position, the top guy gets his arms underneath the bottom guy’s shoulders and reach to grab his belt by his sides. Top guy pushes hips forwards and downwards towards the floor to effectively distribute weight and smother the bottom guy. Real NAS-TEY!
Then once you’re bored being nasty, one arm comes across bottom guy’s chest to grab opposite lapel and then come up to knees. Turn bottom guy on his side and top guy’s shin comes across bottom guy’s back to prevent him from rolling back. Top guy’s farthest hand grabs bottom guy’s top wrist, the releases lapel to grab own wrist. Turn bottom guy’s hand towards his back for a kimura.
After drilling this several times, we also did kimura from side control as done in previous classes to familiarise ourselves with kimura from various positions.
Sparring time. As it has always been in Dante’s class, he would pick couple of guys (usually 4-5) with advance/solid skills (in my opinion) to remain on the mats for the duration of the sparring time. Then the rest would rotate amongst them every 5 minutes, alternating sparring and resting. I‘ve always joked to guys like Big Steve, Keith, Elliott, Gerry and others who always get picked by Dante is that the problem with getting good at BJJ is that you get less rest during sparring.
Today, this opinion was crushed as Dante picked me to remain on the mats. Now, I KNOW I don’t have solid BJJ skills – my neck and joints would attest to it. What I can say is that my survival skills are getting better – this is not about holding out on chokes and joint locks but about preventing myself from being in the position in the first place and awareness when I get myself in such positions to enable me to attempt to get out of it (sometimes).
But I am not one to complain for the honour and did my best for 25 minutes. At least I know my cardio is getting better...
Important point to note:
Big Steve complimented me on my burgeoning skills (gee thanks, Steve) but noted that my posture could be improved. I admit, I round my back on top position often and lean forwards too much. I need to be more mindful of this in the future.
Post title taken from one of the quotes of Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido.
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