The Future

Today I went back to the Grappler's Guide Academy. It was an open mat day and I thought it would be a good opportunity to switch things up a little, not to mention it's kind of rough to hike out all the way to NYC just for Shaolin's open mat every week. One of Jason's old students who now trains full time at Lloyd Irvin's Camp Springs location was visiting as well. I didn't get to roll with him, but I did get several good nogi rounds in. My work schedule doesn't coordinate well with the days Shaolin holds nogi classes (which are only twice per week anyway) so it had been a while since I did nogi.

One of the good things about being at Jason's school is that a lot of the guys are significantly bigger (at least 20 pounds more) than me so I really have to focus on technique. Jason also teaches more leg locks than Shaolin does, and is also great about ensuring that students do NOT crank or ever really finish a leg lock. My first round I was leg locked and wrist locked quite a few times and then got used to watching out for them. I got to roll with Jason for a round as well. I don't really get the chance to roll with black belts but it's the best opportunity you have to see where your weaknesses are. Jason has been preparing for NoGi Worlds in California so he took today easy in terms of rolling. I could tell he was looking out to see how I was executing each technique and as expected, Jason was always one step ahead of me. He wasn't really going for submissions but definitely working to better his position at all times. At the end, he pointed out that I needed to work on the knee cutter pass. I'm still not really used to doing the knee cutter in nogi, but all you need to do is get the underhook in the opposite leg you're knee cutting and go for the pass.

I'm pretty certain I'm going to do the Grappler's Quest in December in NJ. Apparently the Abu Dhabi Trials were postponed until next year, so maybe if I have more time when that date is announced I'll be able to compete in that.

Additionally, I had to have the "what are you going to do with your life" talk with my parents the other night. They weren't too pleased that I wanted to work for one more year before attending graduate school, but frankly, I don't have time to visit schools, study for the GRE, take the GRE, write a personal statement, and apply to graduate school with my current work schedule (and would like to make some more $$$ to pay for higher education!). I don't even have weekends to myself- I'm working 3 out of 4 weekends this month! The point of my saying this is that they told me that training will really have to take a back seat next year if I'm applying for graduate school in fall 2013. This is something I obviously knew, but didn't want to really address. I hate not being able to train at least three times per week, and having next to no training next year is really going to be rough on me. I doubt whatever job I get next year will be as taxing as mine currently is in terms of hours per week at work, but regardless all that work for graduate school is going to take up a lot of time and is ultimately more important than training. I'm going to try my best to take morning classes or something, but I'm really hoping I don't stagnate too much next year.

New Job, New Gym

This past Monday I was able to catch one BJJ class before my first day of work today. I rolled with a lot of newer people so I took the opportunity to try and improve some of the things I've been working on. I worked a lot of open guard, specifically spider guard. I normally use spider guard to get people off balance, but I tried to work on 1-2 definite sweeps this time. I've been watching Tinguinha's spider guard dvd when I have the time, and I think it's paying off. Spider guard is definitely my favorite open guard but I need to strengthen it.

Unfortunately, Monday was one of my last classes at Jason Scully's BJJ school known as the Grappler's Guide Academy. I found out today that starting next Monday, I will be working at Fordham Law School's Feerick Center for Social Justice for the next ten months. I won't be back home on time to get to train at GGA, especially since Civic Corps expects its members to work an average of 43 hours per week. Vitor Shaolin's BJJ school is about a 15 minute train ride from where I will be working. I've dropped in and trained there once and it seems like an awesome atmosphere and everyone was very friendly. Of course it remains to be seen whether a 43 hour work week will give me that much time to train, but I'll figure all that out once orientation is done and I see what my work schedule is like. The real world is nuts!

Open Mat

Jason ran a tournament this weekend, so I didn't get to train this Friday or Saturday. Instead, I opted to go to the open mat on Friday for one hour. Jason's open mat always has a pretty good turnout, and it gives students a chance to work on certain moves and openings they have noticed during class. I got about 6 or so good 5-6 minute rounds of nogi in.

One of the guys I rolled with was in his forties or so and I think he was either a wrestling coach or had a lot of wrestling experience. He helped me clean up my single leg a little and showed me some variations. Stand up is one area of BJJ that I really need to clean up, so I was excited that there was someone there with wrestling experience. Jeff, one of my coaches when I trained in Atlanta, has been wrestling for a ridiculously long time and therefore also incorporated wrestling takedowns into the women's class. Between Jeff's drills and this guy's help, I was able to pull off three single legs on one person afterwards! This was exciting for me, because I always try and go for a takedown, but almost always end up pulling guard. All of my sparring sessions were pretty technical, and I did a better job of balancing being calm with being aggressive.

I noticed I was getting caught in some leg locks and calf crushers. Especially at higher levels and in nogi, I'm going to have to start getting used to having leg locks applied on me. I don't even go for them normally but I think I might start to in the future. Jason has always stressed to NEVER crank on leg locks, and his students definitely respect that.

This week I begin orientation for Civic Corps, which lasts for four days and is in four different sites. I think they will be in four of the boroughs and will not touch Staten Island. You can guarantee I'll be bringing my gi to orientation so I can check out the BJJ schools in each borough :)

FINALLY back to training

After having company over for a week and then going on vacation for another five days, tonight was my first night back training. I become restless when I stay away from doing anything active for too long so I was really craving some BJJ. I managed to get some running and did circuits on two days, but you can't really replace BJJ! I still haven't caught up on sleep from my 6am flight the other day and almost didn't hit the mat today, but I couldn't resist!

I get to the gym and the first thing I realize is that I forgot my belt, which has never happened before! At my gym, if you forget your belt, you have to wear a pink belt. So I definitely got some weird looks and laughs when I put on the pink belt, especially since there were quite a few new faces on the mat today.

I had no problem with the first class, but the second class is where it showed that I had not trained in a while. Jason had us drill for the first half of class. We started from open guard and had to drill a pass followed by a submission of our choice. This gave me the opportunity to work on my strengths and moves I would do in competition. I definitely blanked on what I needed to be working on. I was messing up some basics for the knee cutter pass and was unsure of what to do once I passed. After a few tries I finally got into the groove and Jason helped me clean up the pass. But I definitely felt a little embarrassed when I wasn't sure what to do. We then did 2:22 rounds, which allowed me to pick up the pace while rolling. I need to work on becoming more aggressive when rolling without going nuts, so drills like this are good for me.

I could have some really exciting job news in the next couple of weeks, and if everything works out, I'll be training in New York City. Now where to train...