by RickMatz on Thu Aug 28, 2014 10:39 am
Another fine day in BJJ class.
The way it works is that the MMA gym I go to is sort of a satlelite school of a large BJJ academy (which has a 4th degree BB as the owner/main instructor; they have a full schedule every day, but I can't justify their fee which is 2x of what I'm paying now).
Our gym offers BJJ twice a week plus open roll on Sundays (I'll start going to that when I have more to offer and the weather starts turning colder), taught by a purple belt (who should be a brown belt by everyone's comments, but I don't know the story).
The students consists of white and blue belts (many of them accomplished wrestlers and at least one of the blue belts should be purple but won't test until our instructor gets his brown).
Lately, the purple belt has had to back out of the Wednesday class, leaving the instruction to one of the blues.
The blue discovered that I have pretty good rolls and breakfalls and has an interest in working on the standing throws. To demonstrate, he used me as uke.
Many students aren't really comfortable with falling yet. The gym owner is getting a crash pad so people can get more comfortable with breakfalls on that before having to practice them on a 1" wrestling mat over concrete.
We'll be working on breakfalls a lot more in the future.
We worked on a wrestling take down, a variation of a drag over the lower leg into turning into side control then finally a variation of a shoulder throw done up to the instant before the throw as there wasn't anyone else there who was really ready for taking falls.
I enjoyed that a great deal.
Then we rolled as usual for the last half of class.
As I mentioned above, when I have a little more time and more skill to offer, I'm going to start taking advantage of the open roll class.
I have an acquaintance who is a 3rd dan in judo. He travels as much (more) than I do, but when he's in town he teaches once a week. His class is all beginners. He has a space problem right now, but is planning on getting more mats in the next month or so. He invited me to come on over when both our schedules allow.
If I can get a judo lesson from him once or twice a month, plus the open roll and my regular class; I'll certainly be satisfied.
One more thing. The owner of the MMA gym is a great guy, but not a business man. He's beginning to realize that the building is sitting idle during the day and his missing a chance at more income. Now he's talking about bringing in a yoga instructor during the day time. As tight as I am, I'd start going in an instant.
You gotta love it when a plan comes together.I'm piecing together a practice.