I’ve noticed that the only time I’m not well spoken is when the topic is my feelings. How did this make me feel, how did that make me feel. I’m the hardest subject I’ve ever tried writing about. I’m certainly no poet; I don’t have the subtleties required for poetry, though I do feel I have a fairly masterful grip on the beast that is the English language. I think it might just come down to the old cliché of self analysis being really frigging hard. I can live with that. I’ve no real desire to be able to use words to convey how I feel, though I suppose it could come in handy. However, this is all preamble.
The other night, Thursday, I went out with one of my bosses, Mark, for a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class. If you know me at all you know that I’m really big into fighting as sport, so when Mark asked me if I was interested I jumped at the opportunity. I’ve never been formally trained for any extended period of time, and Jiu-Jitsu is very appealing to the part of me that really likes Greco Roman Wrestling. I do think that the current meta game as far as combat sports goes is probably a solid foundation in Greco Roman and Boxing, but that probably has far more to do with my study of Quinton Jackson’s old fights than anything else. My theories certainly weren’t going to stop me from going out and having a good time.
So Mark and I went to this gym in
We get to Wai Kru. Meet David, a great guy, who also happens to be one of the instructors there, who will later on proceed to motivate me to push my body past what it wants to do, to what it can do. Mark and I warm up by jumping rope, I’m awful at this, but I expect to be. Just doing that winds me and works up a good sweat for me. I’m admittedly out of shape, and my cardio is fairly awful. It’s good though, finding the will to do something. After this we warm up, by doing drills that absolutely drain my cardio. I couldn’t keep up with the rest of the class, no shame; it’s my first night of cardio in a long time. I’d like to improve certainly, don’t mistake my understanding on the current physical limitations of my body for a lack of desire to improve.
After this we go into some BJJ drills. Some fairly basic stuff it seems, much of it revolving around how to first stop someone from hitting you while they’re in your guard (you on your back, them in between your legs [yes, it’s very sexy]) and then later how to turn that into a kimura or other arm lock. Mark and I pair up, and I’d really like to think that we benefited each other quite well. He had a lot of pointers for me, and I was even able to spot a few things for him. It was good. Afterwards Mark and I practiced a few more drills, how to break someone’s guard when you’re mounted, how to escape from someone in your guard via a method called shrimping; the basics basically.
From there the class moved into rolling. Rolling is the fun name for wrestling. I rolled around with this kid named Courtney for a few minutes. Dude is about my height, but jacked, broad chest, all muscle. He also had a wrestling background and had been practicing BJJ for 3 ½ years if I remember right. I felt like I held my own well enough, really. I was just consumed with thinking about all of the technique that I had just learned and the muscle memory was just not there yet. That and Courtney is really good. On our first roll he pulled me into a triangle. I saw that coming, and I saw my mistake. That was a good learning experience. Courtney pointed out what I did wrong, and I agreed. I was very pleased that I had caught that. On the second roll, we matched strength for a while (I like to think I’m deceptively powerful) until he just threw me into a perfect arm bar out of nowhere. It was awesome. He explained to me what I did wrong, but I’ve no idea. I just didn’t see the move happen at all. Amazing. Third roll, we were going fairly even, I think he might have been going a bit easier on me, but time was called before we could really get into it. He noted that I was doing a few things better defensively, and I was happy about that. I thought I was too.
I paired back up with Mark. We rolled for a bit, and I managed to slip a move on him that I’d seen Matt Hughes do. Basically I was in mount (remember to look up terms) passed over one of his legs so I had him in a better position, and from there was able to hope over his leg, pinning his left arm beneath both of my legs, my full weight on his chest, and my right arm holding his right arm away from me. I think it’s pretty much the best move you can slap on someone if you want to punch them in the head a lot. I didn’t want to punch Mark in the head at all, but you get the idea. I did good. Mark was really enthused, and that made me feel really good. The man really loves the sport. It makes the baby steps more than tolerable. On our second roll I was able to get Mark to tap out to a triangle choke, and we were both really happy with that. He was going easy on me, but it was still good to know I had some moves down.
I was spent here. Heck, I was spent about halfway through the night (which lasted 2 ½ half hours, long time to do nothing but intense cardio for me) but I was able to regroup and keep going. It was really great. I hadn’t felt that kind of camaraderie in sport in a very, very long time. I’ll definitely be going back. I just have to work everything out in regards to my schedule, as well as Mark’s, since I couldn’t imagine going without him for the first couple classes at the very least.
No comments:
Post a Comment