I’ve decided I like no gi. It’s similar enough that most of what I know translates, but I like being slippery. I’m not really athletic or explosive enough to really make it work, but it is entertaining.

Damian led class. We started with a closed guard break. We posture up by thrusting both hands towards their throat, then broad jump our feet forward, stand, pop our hips, and then step back into a combat base. JR and drilled together. It didn’t take long for our lack of explosiveness to become apparent. That jump/stand/pop combo is tiring.

The rest of the lesson was on the opposite side. They pop up, we go to DLR, they shuck that, we go shin-on-shin sitting up then into single leg X. The shuck that, to avoid the heel hook, and from there we went right into the single leg X ankle lock we’ve done before in gi. Same technique, just slightly different grips due to the lack of gi.

For rounds, we split int groups of 6 and did a round robin. I had Bob, JR, Brady, New Josh, and Mongoose. Did great with Bob. JR and I were pretty even. I did better than I expected with Brady, threatening a darce choke at one point. New Josh may be a white belt, but he’s wrestled before, so he was surprisingly tough. Mongoose and I were both entertained in our 5 minutes. Very slippery and active. I got a darce, and he did the BJ Penn style arm isolation from the back into a one arm Marcelo style choke.