State of my … Jiu Jitsu
Well, I’ve been back at BJJ for nearly 2 months now — minus a couple weeks when I was out sick. Things are actually starting to come around a bit. I feel like I’m starting to make a bit of progress again. I’ve learned a few new things and am slowly remembering things from past years.
The BJJ school has moved, and it is now closer to a five minute drive than a 12-15 minute drive, which is great. The new place is owned by the BJJ black belt. In the past, we’ve been in spaces owned by others. Most recently, we had been in a large TKD school that always had several different classes going on at the same time and felt to me somewhat like a 3-ring circus. The new space is smaller, and has room for only six pairs of students to spar at the same time, which is plenty on some nights, but last night a few people had to sit out each round.
I’m still one of the worst blue belts — or at least, one of the least effective in sparring, based on my size. I’m not really particularly competitive with other blue belts my size or larger. I enjoy sparring with the lighter weights because I get a chance to move and try more things. Against the bigger guys, I’m in a bit of survival mode, and sometimes I’m not even surviving particularly well.
Yesterday was a pretty good class for me. I was having some trouble with the moves of the day (a half-mount roll into turtle control, and an open guard roll into an ankle lock), but those eventually came along. My sparring was middling — I got to work with a lightweight purple belt that I outweight by 45 pounds, and we had a fun roll without any submissions. I sparred with a young teen orange belt, and worked the move of the day. I also rolled with two white belts, one of whom was a relative novice, the other is closer to blue belt level. It was fun to work moves on the novice, though I learned that my arm triangle choke from side control needs some work.
The other item of note regarding BJJ is that with the new location has come a new schedule. There is no longer a Tuesday class I can go to. So now I’ll be going Monday and Thursday. I preferred Tuesday because I could go from teaching TKD to BJJ class on the same night and have Thursday as my workout day off. But now I’ve got BJJ on Monday, Teaching TKD on Tuesday, Hapkido/Teaching/Advanced TKD on Wednesday, BJJ on Thurs, Hapkido on Friday, and TKD on Saturday. And that is quite a lot. We’ll see how it works out.