I’m beginning to enjoy Crossfit more and more. The morning gang is a good group of people, and I’m definitely feeling and seeing the benefits of the effort. Set personal records in the dead lift, press, and back squat this morning. Not that I had a previous personal best before…but you gotta start somewhere!

BJJ class tonight started off with our usual warm up. Then we did a Smackdown-esque conditional drill. 20 each of over the shoulder sweep, butterfly to full guard rocks, around the worlds, standing guard breaks, and torrando guard passes to knee on belly. Mo and I certianly got a pretty good sweat going. We were almost finished when it was just he and I and Mongoose and Derrick still going….Damian yelled out that the last pair to finish would be punished, and not one second later Mo did his 20th pass and I yelled ‘done!’ It almost seemed like we cheated it was so fast!

We then switched things up, and Damian introduced something new. “Flow sparring” It’s like a timing drill. Go easy, like 25%, but be moving continuously, working with your partner, doing move after move after move in a sequence. If he gets a submission, let him have it, tap, then escape and continue. I made the comparison to a jazz solo. Make it up as you go along! Se we did 8 minute rounds of this. Mongoose and I paired up and just had fun with it, trying different things and what not. Damian stopped us after about 7, and told us to get a drink and be ready to demonstrate what we were doing for everyone. Eeek! We did, with him providing some commentary.

We re-partnered and did another 8 minutes. This time around, I got Rod, the new guy and chatterbox. He’s big, probably about 220 or so, and just…will…not…shut…up. We did BJJ 101 for the first 4 minutes, with him talking himself through each move. Then we mixed it up and improvised the last 4. Well, I improvised, he did mostly the same things since that’s all he knows so far.

After class I hooked up with another new face, Mason, and did another 10 minutes or so. He’s a blue belt that’s getting back into things after a loooooong layoff.