What a night.

I arrived a bit early, changed, and watched the last bit of the fundamentals class. They had an odd number, so Damian asked me to round them out. I drilled for a couple of minutes, balloon sweep, switch to knee pillow when they elbow escape, then choke, wing choke, and armlock.

Then we did a 6 minute round, and I was paired up with a zero stripe white belt. And he was after my scalp. Slightly spazzy, but not too crazy, but young and strong. I had him in guard, and he stiff armed me to get posture, so I attacked with an armlock. I extended it some, but he was being stubborn, and I didn’t want to hurt him, so I relaxed, let him pull it out, and switched to a triangle. He was being stubborn there too, and started to lift me up, so I released that too. After the round, I was already huffing and puffing.

And then we warmed up for the advanced class. I dunno if it was the heat and humidity, an off day, jumping right into that roll, or some combo of all of them, but I was dying by the end of the warm up.

Tim led class, which was a subset of the fundamentals class. When mounted, we can squash them so much they can’t move, or we can give them enough space to hang themselves. So we float, and when they upa, switch to knee pillow and attack the choke or armlock. I drilled with Wade, and it was a welcome respite and gave me a chance to catch my breath.

For rounds we split into groups of 3. I had Mongoose and Tim. 10 minutes in, 5 out. I made it through the 5 with Mike. Apparently Tim was watching and/or saw me struggling afterwards, because he asked if I was okay and switched me to be with Wade and Evan instead. My 30 minutes in were a mental and physical grind, harder than anything I’ve done in recent memory. But I made it. I even came close to a nice sit out to the back vs Evan near the end.