My neck is still stiff and achey, but ibuprofen works wonders. I banged out W3D2 and W3D3 of the 100 Pushups on Wednesday and this morning. Hard, but not difficult. Still no signs of the headache, thankfully.

We had a small class last night, maybe 12 of us. Cooler than it has been in recent weeks too, which was a welcome change. I figured we were going to do more take down stuff, like on Tuesday, but apparently someone asked a good question, so we review the clamp position we spend a week on a couple of months ago. I really like this position, it’s not one I can get to very often, but it has a ton of options. From your own closed guard, you break down your partner’s posture (basically bend him over, ideally with a hand or two on the mat), and escape your hips to one side and grab a tricep. From there, you can do a pseudo-kimura, an elbow crush, a straight armlock, a triangle, or an omaplata! It’s a classic “dilemma”. Problems have solutions…dilemmas don’t.

Afterwards, I chatted with Damian some. A while back we were talking about “esgrima”, which is a windshield wiper like motions with your legs. But he didn’t know what the word meant. My sister-in-law is Brazillian, so my wife asked her. Turns out it’s Portugese for fencing. Which makes no sense what so ever.

We chatted long enough that everyone else had already paired up to spar. Only I was left….and Big Mike. We, Brazillian jiu-jitsu was developed to allow the smaller guy to beat the larger…so away we go. Big Mike is big enough that there’s no way I can push him over, so I pulled guard. A rushed armlock attempt later, and I’ve been passed, and I’ve got 240 pounds of guy laying on me. Which sucked. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to tap to a fat guy that’s just laying on me. So I gutted it out, and waited. He tried to transition to mount, but I was quick enough to regain guard. Another failed armlock, and he’s right back on me. I was quicker this time, and threaded the needle to my knees and rolled back into guard. I tried the over the shoulder sweep, but he drove into me, and I ended up in the clamp position, but couldn’t escape my hips enough to get any offense going. He passed and ended up back mounting me. He laid there a long time, but if you’re going to tap me out, you’ve gotta do it. I’m in a hopeless position, but there’s no freebies here. He eventually got around to it. We went again, I was more aggressive to start with, which ended up with him driving into me and falling into an arm triangle and choking me out quick. In our last roll, I tried an open guard, and he stood up. I got off a hook sweep and got on top for the first time. His size hampers me some, but he’s very good with keeping me from getting any posture and blunting my offense.

Damian is off to California next week to train with the big guns. Hopefully he’ll bring back some cool stuff and show us too. Next weekend is the Dave Camerillo seminar. I skipped the last one because I didn’t think I knew enough to make it worth while, but I’m really looking forward to it this time around.