All Work and No Play...

...makes me crave BJJ! See that rhyme? :)

This is the first time in 7 days since I've been on the mat. Work has been nuts lately and I was hoping to make the 5:30 class today, but only got the tail end of the 6:30 and the full 7:30 class, as I had a meeting that went over time.

That all being said, I was not in the best mood. Between not being able to train for the past week and missing the first class, I was pretty frustrated. It's not the greatest idea to unleash your frustrations while rolling, because (shocker of shockers) no one will want to roll with you! So I tried to focus all this energy onto learning what Shaolin was teaching.

The drills in the advanced class built off of one another. The sequence was this:

- begin standing in front of the person who is laying down. grab the knees and step to the side to knee on belly

- person on bottom turns into you

- person on top puts their hands on either side of the head of the person on bottom and jumps to the other side

- person on bottom goes for the single

- person on top circles to the back

- as the person on top circles to the back, the person on bottom blocks the leg and gets the high crotch to step out and take the back

We did these step by step over the course of half an hour. Definitely a complicated sequence but it's a nice option as opposed to just sprawling when someone gets the single leg.

Shaolin has extended the Monday and Wednesday classes from 8:30 to 8:45 so we can get some longer rounds in. Additionally, students can stay until 9pm to get some extra rolling and drilling in. However, Shaolin himself leaves at 8:45pm and some of the purple belts monitor the class until 9pm. Rolling was better than expected for me. One big thing I've been trying to focus on is making sure I post my leg when on top in half guard. Otherwise, it is very easy for the person on bottom to sweep you and/or take the back. This happened to me a couple of times during one roll today, and Shaolin came over to show me that I had to maintain top pressure and head control to avoid this. I appreciated that he was watching and really noticed what I was doing wrong. Rolling was much more smooth after that, and I even managed to sneak in two triangle chokes during two separate rolls! This is not common for me, as I always seem to get stacked and passed when attempting the triangle. I've been trying to break my opponents posture when they are in my guard, and I think this has helped me in setting up submissions, particularly the triangle.

I'm hoping I can make it to BJJ tomorrow. The rest of this week is going to be crazy at work and I need BJJ as an outlet!