I'm Mr. Blue!

Got my blue belt after Wednesday's randori.

Awesome! :)

Amal asked me to roll for a few during the Wednesday randori (just to test me out a little bit I suppose), then at the end of class, he called Ross (a yellow belt) up. Ross got his orange belt and I got my blue. Not that getting a colored belt is why I'm training, but it -is- nice to feel like others feel like your knowledge and skill are progressing according to plan. It certainly made me reflect on how much training I've done and how far I've come.

It's been a long road so far and a lot of work. I started all this on April 19, 2006 (when I started I could barely do the warm-up); I guess it's been just under 1 year of spending about 5 hours a week (on average) training. Many times it was 6 hours a week, some weeks I've done 7, and I think one week when I had a lot of spare time and was between jobs where I went 9 hours. For the first 4 months, I probably only went about 2 hours a week. I started running almost every day and lost about 40 lbs., mainly motivated by a desire to really be in shape for BJJ and not be a tub when it came time to roll. After I got my 2nd stripe or so, it sort of started getting more and more addictive. When I got my third stripe, it stepped up again. I felt like I should go to at least to one blue belt class to continue to work on fundamentals (but often I went to both the A and B blue belt classes), both purple belt classes, and both weekly randoris. I bet I've spent over 200 hours of training in the last 11 months and could probably count on one hand the total number of weeks I've gone without training -at all- (most of those were weeks I was traveling outside of Colorado).

Anyway. What a great way to end a Wednesday!

Purple Belt and Gi Randori

Skipped the blue belt class today, just went straight to purple belt and randori.

Purple Belt Class
Stand-up work:
* Cross punching
* Cross/hook combos
* Cross/uppercut combos
Ground:
* Practiced butterfly guard sweep (side one and 'taking out the trash' one)
* Drilled butterfly guard
* Knee-on-stomach defense (wall blocking)
* Knee-on-stomach escapes (light foot/heavy foot)
* Drilled side control (up, down, and out).


Randori:
Did pretty good. I still have a sore shoulder. Will this thing ever get better? I got totally stalled with a guy about my size/skill. He was just stuck in my guard. I should have tried more sickle sweeps for practice, but he wasn't very good at holding posture and didn't seem to want to stand to pass guard, so I kept him down trying for armbars and triangles. Rolled with Nick a bit. Got stuck in half-guard with him for a while, but he went for a kata gatame and got it just right while I wasn't paying attention. After class Nick showed me and Ian how to do kata gatame right as well as some tips on the barabo choke. Think I'll schedule some privates with Nick.

Bllue Belt Class

Blue Belt class. Worked on punching drills. Headlock escape.
Side control. Side control hip escape. Side Control, switching sides.

Open Mat Sunday

	Just went in for a little open rolling today. Ian was there, as well as Robert and some other blue belt I didn't know. Did okay, but I'm nursing my injured shoulder a lot, so I don't feel like I can roll well right now. Still, it's good experience.