Back in Black

Get it? My gi is black :D

Anyways, Friday was my first class back in a couple weeks. I'm feeling much better, and going to class has seemed to help me. I followed up by going to the beginners class on Saturday. It was very good.

I'm not going to go into details about my rolls, because they're nothing special. I'm just glad to be back.

I'm still here

I haven't updated in a couple weeks, and I appologise. I've had a pretty serious chronic fatigue syndrome flare up, and haven't had the strength or will to train. Its all I can do to get out of bed during these episodes, so I'm lucky just to get to work. I am still not at 100%, but I do think I'll be able to get to training tonight. We'll see how I feel after work today.

CFS is something I've been dealing with for about seven years now, and has taken a good portion of my youth. My doctor thinks it might be linked to my service in Kuwait and Iraq (CFS is more prevalent in veterans of this region), so I'm going to be pursuing VA benefits. I'm not really out to get money from this illness, I'm more interested in treatment options. I feel like if this disease is actually service connected, then the VA should fix me. If I do get a pension, however, I'll not turn it down. I have a daughter to put through college, after all :P

I want to thank everybody who reads this blog for helping me stay motivated. I don't get a lot of commenters, which is fine. I see the page views tick up, and it motivates me to keep training and keep writing. I've gotten over 500 page views, and I'm certain that less than 100 of those are from myself! So thanks again! I'll post a write up if I train tonight. Thanks for the support.

Quick Update

I only trained thursday this week because of the holiday ('MURICA!)

Tuesday's class was canceled, because one of our students (a 14-yr old boy) ran away from home. A couple of the instructors are cops who opted to keep looking for him, rather than have class. There was also two massive traffic jams that blocked the back up instructors from getting to class.

Bobby and I were the only ones who showed up on thursday. He's a 4-stripe blue belt that is also a former cage fighter. He keeps skipping his tests for purple, saying he doesn't train enough to be a purple. However, he's pretty badass. We just rolled the whole time, with him giving pointers as we went.  Having a solo session with him was absolutely humbling, astonishing, and I learned quite a bit. I am still sore from it.

I was planning on going to friday and saturday's classes too, but I ended up getting side tracked. No excuses, I just got lazy.

Also, I didn't get to watch the Kennedy vs. Gracie fight, but I wanted to. I'm an Army guy, currently a reservist. Its good to see the military repped in MMA. However, I'm also a BJJ guy. Its good to see a Gracie back in the ring. I wasn't rooting for either, but for both. I was pleased with the results though. It was, supposedly, a close fight. I'll watch it eventually. 

GREGO SMASH!

Tonight was an exceedingly good night at class.

All week I've felt like shit. I've been exhausted all week, and tuesday I didn't even go to class. Today at work, I was nearly catatonic, and decided that I probably wouldn't make it in. However, when I was driving home, I told myself to not be a whiny bitch and MAN THE FUCK UP.

So I did, and I"m glad.

I got to class, still feeling like hammered shit and got winded on our normal warm ups. I was thinking right away that I'd have a bad night. However, once we got into class, focusing on the techniques allowed me to put my fatigue and self-doubt out of my mind.

We started off doing a takedown (I don't know what its called) where you basically just grab the guy's arm from the clinch and fall back. We continued that into an arm bar, and then we started working and turtle chokes from the scramble.

When we started rolling, I was completely in the mood for jiu jitsu. I started off with Curtis, the big guy. We are fairly evenly matched, because his size and strength far outstrip my own, but I defend well. He couldn't get anything on me, and I was able to lock him down in half guard indefinitely.  My next round was with Rodney, an experienced white belt who used to do cage fighting.

Apparently, he's double jointed. I caught him in an omoplata. A DEEP omoplata that I couldn't finish as a submission, so I just rolled him over and took his arm. At this point his right arm is trapped under his back and I have his left in Americana. He wouldn't tap. He said "yeah it hurt, but I'm double jointed."

He didn't get me in anything though.

My next round was with Ken, who just got made a three stripe blue belt. He's good, and he complimented my "awareness" because I attacked his arm on a transition. He fought out, but he was still happy with my performance.

I rolled with Curtis again, and we had a really good match with a lot of back and forth. He mounted me, and I couldn't get him off. So I just waited and defended. He want to transition to an armbar and I escaped. Again, we couldn't tap each other.

My last roll was with Paul, who's probably our best competitor and very, very good. I like rolling with him because when he catches me with something, he lets me fight and try to escape, then he walks me through what I did. He submitted me twice. However, the second time we rolled, I got him in an omoplata from guard! I'm starting to love omoplata . He told me that he though he could escape it, so he let me continue on with it...but I caught it too deep. I've found that the key is to shoot the hips up and get my crotch as deep in their armpit as I can. Then I rotate my hips back and pull down. After that, its just a matter of keeping them flat.

I'm very proud of my performance tonight. I think its the first time I've ever gotten a remotely resisted tap against somebody as good as Paul. Nights like tonight keep my motivation up and keep me going.

Getting kinda serious

So, tonight we had evaluations.

We started off doing positional sparring. Basically Brian, the black belt that we're affiliated under, just wanted to see how we moved. Then we opened it up to live sparring and we did three rounds.

I got thoroughly whooped by everybody I rolled with, but they were all more experienced. I wasn't really happy with my performance, but I'll do better next time.

At the end, we all lined up. I ended up getting a stripe on my white belt! Honestly, I kinda figured I would, but i"m still happy. Its good to have some positive affirmation in your life.

Lots of stripes all around, even Joe got a stripe on his brown belt.

As expected, Adam got promoted to purple belt. I'm really happy for him, and I really got to see him cut loose against another purple belt (one who accompanied Brian). He is better than I thought we was.

Anyways, I'm so tired that I don't feel like writing much. I'm happy though :)

Exhaustion

So, on Thursday, we have Professor Brian Jones coming in to do evaluations. I've never met Brian, but I hear he's awesome. He's a Carlson Jr. black belt, and he holds dan rank in Judo as well. We're affiliated to his school, since we when our school was started we didn't have a black belt instructor. Now we have Darrin, also a Carlson Jr black belt (though, he got his brown from Sr.), he doesn't want to step in on Brian's business. He just wants to train.

Tonight Joe, our brown belt instructor, was out again. I think he's got some family stuff he's dealing with. So Paul decided we should just roll to get ready for evaluations. Thats what we did.

For an hour.

I won't lie, I had a blast. I did really well at defending tonight. I think Adam is the only one who submitted me tonight. I hope he gets his purple on Thursday. He's been at four-stripes on his blue for over a year now. In our school, Joe can give stripes, but Brian does the belt tests. Brian usually tests at his school in Frankfort, which Adam can't go to.

Anyways, as the only white belt in the class tonight, I was subjected to an onslaught of blue belt fury. I got complimented several times for my defense. I almost got Ken in an ezekiel. He told me if I would have just waited a few more seconds, I would have got him with it. As it was, he was able to get his chin down and defend it.

Heath also complimented my guard. He couldn't pass it. I actually ended up giving up the guard, because I wanted to try a sweep (it didn't work.)

I'm tired as hell now. I'm sore too. Adam is a big guy, and he like side control...so my ribs hurt.

Overall though, I'm happy.

Cauliflower Ear?

Decent class tonight. We started off with doing our warm ups, with Darrin teaching mount escapes. We had a decent class size, though we had a small kid in class. He's only 8 or 9, and I don't want to roll with him. I'm not trying to be snobby, I just don't want to hurt a kid with my newbery.

Anyways, I started rolling with Nick. He's a pretty good white belt. Nothing special there, I just worked on my defenses, which was my goal for the rest of the night. I went with Ken next. When I rolled with him, he kneed the hell out of my ear. Its purple and swollen right now. I'm going to get it drained tomorrow if it looks bad. Suprisingly, it doesn't look really puffy.

Went with Adam, Justin, and Heath as well. Again, I just focused on not tapping and was mostly successful. I had to tap a few times, but that is to be expected. I was able to get one submission because heath tried to take my back. When he went for it, I rolled into turtle with him still on my back. The way we landed, his feet were locked together on my pelvis. I just drove my hips down, and he tapped. I can't really take too much credit, because we kinda just fell into it. Still, pretty cool.

My ear is hurting like a bastard though. I'm going to invest in some headgear.