"The gi is your weapon" lol

Friday 14th August 2009

Last Friday's training was brilliant. I had all intention of just going to the beginners class as I was a bit stiff and thought I'd skip the sparring. But I had to go a different route and ended up in traffic up the wrong way of the M25! (Being a natural blonde definitely shows sometimes!! lol)
So I managed to get back round and headed for class. I made it in time for the intermediate class.

We warmed up, the usual back-to-back sit-ups, knee-on-belly / sit-ups and some painful top-to-toe swapping thing that I can't even describe. Even thinking about it makes my legs hurt lol.
We carried on with fifty arm bars, fifty paired push-ups with high-fives in between and fifty kimuras. By the time we'd done all this I was ready for the sit down to watch Andy run through the techniques.

We learned some chokes from mount using the bottom of your gi - very cheeky! :) We ran through a few variations of the choke and then lined up for the sparring. We drilled passing guard, mount escapes and escapes from side control. I was with Sheena, we took time to run through the techniques we'd learnt earlier as well. All in all a very productive lesson!!

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Wednesday 19th August 2009 - No Gi

Last night was fun. I am still very new to the no-gi classes and its amazing the difference between gi and no-gi. You don't realise just how much you use your gi in chokes and sweeps etc.

We warmed up in pairs. There were some very new warm-ups I'd never done before and I was with Rich. We then did the usual warm-ups; snaking, spider-man, shoot and lifts etc.

We practised a choke which I think was the arm triangle. We practised it from side-control in the scarf position. It was very effective with an added variation on the end to make sure you can finish off the choke using minimal energy and effort. This included walking your legs round by your opponent's head and leaning back, thus pulling them harder into the choke.
Andy showed us the defense for this as well, which looked very funny to try and do but worked so well! Myself and Rich were running through this and then taking each others back and seeing how we could finish off the defense.

Andy then put us into weight groups and we ran through king of the hill sparring. Take-downs, guard passing, mount, side-control and mount from the back. I'd never drilled no-gi before so was getting agitated when I went for submissions where I would usually grip their gi (or my own). When in mount I had my hooks in and the heat and the sweat made us all slippery and we were just all over the place. No-gi definitely takes some time to get used to!

My strongest was on mount from the back. I enjoy attacking from the back, I feel strong in that position.
Jadon hurt his knee so sat out for the end bit. Although I think we were all quite glad of that - his rashguard is definitely at the end of its life!! Lol ewwwwww! (Sorry Jadon) He tried submitting someone by shoving his armpit in their face!! Was hilarious!

I'll definitely be making some room for no-gi lessons from now on, it was thoroughly enjoyable and is good to learn more submissions without the use of the gi.