Position, Transition, Submission

Last night my dad found a new, quicker way to get to class which meant I was actually early for once!  Woohoo!  Of course then we proceeded to ride down the road a couple minutes before turning around which made me late. Oh well.  Class hadn’t started yet anyway as we had a new kid who was trying it out.  I say kid, but this guy was actually older than me so...yeah.

Class started out with the normal warm-up (running, skipping, stretching, etc.), but strangely we skipped rolls.  The theme for this week is knee on belly; submissions, transitions, escapes, etc.  (We worked on it last night at no-gi class too.  I meant to post about that yesterday, but I still have to get used to this whole blogging thing. Baby steps.)  I have to admit I was pretty excited when I found out that we were focusing on it since this is a position I am not at all comfortable with.  Caleb actually had his friend, Josh, come to help teach since apparently this is one of his favorite positions to use in tournaments.  After checking our grips and foot position, Josh showed us a transition to get from one side to the other.  We proceeded to drill that along with two submissions: a baseball choke and a triangle choke.  The baseball choke was pretty simple, but I kept getting my foot stuck on the triangle. Hmm... I will have to convince my sister to let me practice that one on her.

As for sparring, I rolled with Jonathan, Josh, and Dennis.  I am glad I got the chance to roll with Josh since 1) he is a purple belt, 2) Caleb likes to brag on him, and 3) I wanted to see how I did compared with the last time we rolled a couple of months ago.  I think I have improved some considering this time I wasn’t totally lost when he stood up in my open guard.  I definitely have a long way to go though.

Hi Everyone!

I thought I would start this blog off with a proper introduction.  My name is Sydney, and I have been training in martial arts for six and a half years.  Up until a couple years ago, it was just Tang Soo Do.  When I got my black belt though, I found out about this awesome thing called cross-training.  First, it was Hapkido, which, by the way, I still train in on occasion.  Then last fall, my friend/instructor, Caleb, invited me to come train with him at his Jiu-jitsu school.  Let's just say I fell in love with the sport.  I have been training for over a year now and am a yellow belt with one stripe.

Now understand that I am not one of those people who goes to six classes a week and squeezes BJJ into every second of spare time.  Between school and my other martial arts, I don't have a ton of extra time on my hands; and it doesn't help that it's an hour round trip to class.  I do enjoy it a lot though, and I try to get all that I can out of my two practices each week.  I hope writing about practice might help me remember some stuff better.  And hey! If someone actually learns something from this blog, then that's even better.

Oh, and one more thing.  I'm Type A and kinda a perfectionist so if my posts start getting boring (or are boring from the start) I would really appreciate it if someone commented and let me know.  Thanks!