Had some play time today at 10! Another girl who is training for an mma fight showed so I got to get in on the action. Here was the drill she had:

We did 5 cycles of this. Fun times! Coach says that the way we train makes it very difficult for anyone to wear our guys down in a fight.
Anyhow, the gal’s brother is a tattoo artist and sketched out a rough draft of an angry poodle for a girls team logo. I’m including it at the bottom of this post. All the girls like it – except for one who said “hell no!” I asked her to sketch her an idea and send it to me.

After this was the 11:30 gi class. Only one other person showed up – one of the blue belts on my “do not drill with” list. So I sat out and watched. Coach promised to beat me up really good later.

At the 5pm sparring class, I just watched again. It was a large class with lots of big guys that looked like the crushing types. Afterwards was the 6 pm no gi class. During this time, one of the purple belts (who was at the tournament on saturday) pulled me aside to show me some sweeps from spider guard.

He plays a lot of spider guard – and I really appreciated him taking the time to show me some of his game! He also gave me tips for maintaining distance and using inversions to maintain guard and sweep.

At the 7:15 class we drilled a judo throw and it was discovered that I have a mental block against break falling and making noise – need to get over that. As pathetic as it sounds, it’s gonna take some work to get over.

We sparred a few rounds toward the end of class and a fore mentioned purple belt tested my retention of what he showed me. I did fairly well! Think I’ve got some new tools in my arsenal!

Did a couple rounds with our lone blue belt girl (I’ll get there soon!) – she got me with an ankle lock, and I got in a few gi chokes. I think I’m getting better at guard passing! At least when it’s someone my size…

My back is the sore spot this week. It’s enough that I’m having trouble with good bridging motions. Guess that just means I should avoid getting smashed under someone for the next little bit.

After class, I got to play with another of our purple belts for a few mins. He was working on my omoplata from spider (seeing a pattern here maybe?) Both of them told me if I ever have any questions – they’re happy to help.

Coach promised to beat me up real good tomorrow morning. I should be frightened, but I actually look forward to it – I did after all ask for it.

Tomorrow is payday for me! So that means thursday I should be buying a bicycle. The gym is only 7 miles from my house, so I figure I can ride to and fro on tuesday and thursdays – maybe the early morning classes too if I can haul my butt out of bed early enough. It’ll be good for my cardio, and get me nice and warmed up. My main goal however is to strengthen my legs so that my joints can stabilize.