Saturday 27th January

Training on a Saturday is a real treat for me. Work shifts mean I only get a free weekend twice a month, and pesky adulting tends to put a limit on it even if I don't have to work so I was determined to make the most of it.

I had arranged to train during some open put time at the BJJ academy with two of my favorite training partners, both of whom are much better than me and I always feel tangible progress afterward. I have been looking to improve my escapes from the turtle position lately as I'm finding myself getting stuck there quite frequently.

I ended up working on reverse technical stand up type more which will hopefully give me something to try next time someone is trying to squash me. Here is a video of what I was going for:

All credit to Stephen Kesting's youtube channel that is a goldmine of information.

After an hour of trying to get that to work and doing some specific rolls from the back and mount it was time for the class. It was a pretty tough one as we were working on the sit up guard.

As a Judo guy this is a really weird position to play and it felt completely unnatural. I think it's going to take a lot of getting used to. We began with drilling how to get a strong grip on the opponent's collar and keeping them at a distance while you scoot away and stand up.

After drilling we began the specific sparring which I always find enjoyable and I started in the sit up guard position. My partner was a fellow blue belt and I think I'm being generous if I said I lasted 3 seconds before I had my guard passed and got mashed! I just couldn't get the hang of it and it felt like a long round before the buzzer went. After swapping position my partner showed me the error of my ways and proceeded to scoot away and stand up every time. Definitely some room for improvement.

When the class had finished there was more open mat time so me and my friend thought it would be good to get some Judo in. I'm trying to improve my ashi waza (foot sweeps) on the move and during sparring (randori) I rarely get success with them. My main focus of the session was to get in some good ko uchi gari practice and make it the first step in setting up combinations. Here is a video of Jane Bridges showing us how it should be done:

Thanks for sticking with me if you got this far, more next week.

Ossssss