Stripe Night

I started my night off as I usually do. Change, fill up my water bottle, say hello to a few people. But this week, there hasn’t been any women’s class to use the mat before ours starts. Gina has been in Toronto at the Grapple Girl tournament and training camp.

So a few guys were on the mat, sparring a little, stretching, and hanging out. I stretched a bit too. And then rolled a bit with Big Mike. I should tattoo on my arm the phrase “stay on top”, because I stupidly pulled guard against him. He’s big enough that I can’t lock my legs arround him, so he got to half guard pretty quickly. And then used the same passes we’ve been working this week to pass to side control. And then mounted me. And then s-mounted me. Okay…so things aren’t going so well for me. But here I reversed him. He had one of my legs, trying to get back on top, so I sprawled out, wedged my hand between his head and my leg, and just leaned on him. He gave it up and turtled up. I got my knee between his elbow and his knee, opened him up, and got one hook in. Then I switched to the power half to open his other side up, get my other hook in to take his back and roll him onto our sides. I worked a choke for a while, but couldn’t quite get it, so I switched to the mount and then worked an armlock. He eventually shucked me off, and we were both panting and class was ready to start, so we called it a draw.

Needless to say, the class warm up was a bit unnecessary for me! We started class with some self defense drilling. And we were instructed to pair up with someone new. So Chad and drilled a couple of headlock escapes, and a couple of standing choke throws. He’s about 6′ 3″, so….A: I have to be on my toes to choke him and B: When he throws me, he’s got alot of “snap” on it. We then did two of the three half guard passes that we did earlier in the week, and finished things off with some 50% resistance of the same passes.

And at the end of class, a few new stripes were handed out. Tim, Ron, and Shane all got #4, Chad got #2, and a few other people got one too. Plenty of smiles all around.