My rib is still pretty tender…but no excuses, so I took a couple of ibuprofen, and headed off to class.

High attendance, 14 I think.  I paired up with Nate, who I’ve seen on and off for a few weeks, but haven’t met yet.  He’s a zero-stripe white belt, just like me.  I mentioned my rib to him while we were warming up.

Class started with yet-another-variation of the arm-lock from side-control, this time with other grip breaking options, and a defense that leads to us taking the back.  Nate and I played with all the variations, but we mainly stayed with the straightforward version.   We then switched to knee-on-belly, and how it could transition to the same sequence.  We also learned the wrong way to defend the knee on belly, which doesn’t really help me!

After the main class was over, I was going to ask Nate if he wanted to spar, but he ran off to the bathroom.  Matt had shown up, but was stretching and warming up.  Damian paired me up with Patrick, which I thought was a little unusual, he usually lets everyone pick their sparring partners.  Most of the time when I’ve seen him pair people up, he’s testing the weaker guy.  So I was a bit anxious!  I’ve rolled with Patrick before, but it’s been a while.  He was taking it really easy on me, and passing guard is something that I struggle with because I haven’t had a class on it yet.  He ended up getting side control on me, but I escaped to guard.  I heard Damian comment something to the effect that it took me a bit, but I got there, so that made me happy.  In guard I went for a cross collar choke, and mostly got it due to Patrick letting me take it.  He showed me another variation on it too.  I took a breather and shared with him my frustrations about my lack of a top-guard game.  He kind of agreed with me, but explained it’s mostly inexperience.  He also complimented me, saying that I’ve made obvious progress since the last time we sparred.

Both comments felt pretty good.  It’s been just shy of 2 months now, and I’ve been pretty steadily going 3 times per week.  Physically, I feel good, if a constantly a little sore.  Nothing like the first week though!  Mentally, I’ve got a grasp on some things, but it’s just served to open my mind up to everything that I *don’t* know.  I know that the basics can take you a long way, so that’s what I’m focusing on right now.

In the fundamentals class, we were supposed to be doing the knee-on-belly, but Damian changed it up because that was what we did with the main class.  So we did the 5 Positions instead.  It’s a set sequence or drill, going from side control to side mount, to north-south, to side mount on the other side to side control on the other side.  I paired up with purple-belt John (with the pulled groin), and we drilled it.  The side mount isn’t something I’ve really done much with yet, so it took some time to make things semi-smooth.