It’s only been a year and a half or so since we moved into this new space, and already it’s showing signs of being crowded. There was no way I could have squeezed myself, let alone had room for a barbell, into the Crossfit area Saturday morning. It was a zoo!

Open mat was about to start when Christine grabbed me, and introduced me to Greg. He’s here for his first lesson…and Damian’s not here. Being drafted to do so, I give him the basic introduction to jiu jitsu (as I know it). He’s a MMA fan, so he has some idea of the terminology, so thankfully one hump was mostly out of the way right off the bat. I took him through the BJJ 101 thread of yore, dusting off my memories of it one step ahead of teaching it to him. He seemed to enjoy the process of learning, and with each iteration through the thread, I introduced more and more. After a while, I saw Damian and brought Greg over to meet him. They chatted a while and then Damian paired him up with Renato to “roll” some.

In the mean time, Damian grabbed me to roll with. I had done a fair amount of thinking about my roll with him last Saturday. It helped that I was mostly fresh today. He started off with the same De La Riva, but today I realized the mistake I was making last week. I still didn’t pass, but he didn’t sweep me right off the bat. He transitioned into deep half guard, and I correctly remembered the pass. I did make a mistake at the end securing side control. He pointed out that I needed to keep my weight lower. We switched sides so he could demonstrate it, and how I could transition to back control. We switched again so that I could give it a shot. Took his back and collar choked him. We reset, with him in my guard. I over wrapped his arm, but didn’t grab his collar. He pointed out that by grabbing the collar gives me choke options as well as the clamp position options I was aiming at. All in all a pretty good roll with some excellent pointers included.

I grabbed Long to roll for a bit too, but quit a little early so that I could do my lifts in the now empty gym. Only got 2 out of the prescribed 3 reps on the last set. Lifting after rolling makes a big difference!