BJJ Training Journal #4

I am chronicling my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training here on this site. I think writing about it will give me a better perspective on how my training relates to my overall ability. My training sessions are broken into the following:

1. 1. Warmup/Learn and Practice new technique.
2. 2. Do drills against opponents trying only to escape your technique.
3. 3. Sparring against fully resisting opponents (Rolling). This takes up the majority of class time.

Thoughts and best/worse matches:

I was pretty discouraged this week after the complete destruction I had endured on Tuesday night, but I was still really happy to be in class. The whole day I was dizzy, exhausted, had a sore throat/stuffy nose, and just felt really off. I didn’t even have time to eat a proper dinner beforehand and I was prepared for another sound beating. Warmups were alright. Try jumping in the air for an entire 2 minutes as high as you can with your arms straight up like you’re trying to grip the ceiling. No big deal right? Two minutes is a long time to go all out. It’s harder than it sounds. We learned some nifty passes while in an opponent’s spider guard, and an escape from a bicep crusher. I didn’t do so well with these. I honestly attribute it to my newbishness because my much more experienced partner was doing them quite well. We also worked on more spider guard bottom position transitioning between a sweep, armbar, and triangle choke. These were basically review, so they went well.

After Tuesday night I was chatting with my instructor and I was concerned with my perceived lack of improvement. He told me I was improving quite well and told me to try an experiment. During rolling, we get 3-4 opponents over the course of the night. He said to pick someone who is much more advanced than me to test my defense, then pick someone the same level as me to test things I am comfortable with, and finally pick someone newer than me so I can work on things that are a bit riskier and judge how far I have come. I did exactly that. Against the guy who was newer than me, I choked him out 3 times and armbarred him. Against the guy who was equal to me, I tapped him with a kimura and controlled him the rest of the fights fairly easily. Against the first advanced guy I rolled with, he obliterated me, but was very happy to give me suggestions (the advanced guys at my school are really cool for the most part). Against the second advanced guy (not as good as the first advanced guy), I did really well. I kept a dominant position for most of the fights and even got him once with a wrist lock from mount. He did not submit me.

I would have to say this was my best night rolling despite feeling physically drained and awful coming in. It’s amazing what adrenaline can do for your overall sense of physical well-being. It was really nice to feel like I am doing well, rather than picking the best guys to fight and being constantly humbled. That being said, there is SO much I have to learn and I need to train harder to get where I want to be.

1 Comment so far
Leave a comment




Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>

Name (required)

E-mail (required)

URI

Your Comment