Thursday - 10/21/2010

Ope mat was light and I just watched Lex and Sarah throwing. For class, we had 10 people or so with mostly lower ranks when i began several of the black belts rolled in late. I worked on O Goshi and made them do it left sided as well as right sided. I had three groups with a brown belt with a lower rank.It was a good opportunity for the brown belts to work and assist in the instructing of the lower ranks. The new white belt has been doing very well. His Ukemi is excellent and he works hard. Most of them struggled with the left sided O Goshi. I then taught it from a Left vs Right posture as a way to step across and attack someone who is fighting off sided and takes a high grip, which is always a problem. The right side wnet well but the left side was a little bit of a struggle. All in all I thought it was useful for everyone and they did a solid job picking up what we were doing. it did reveal a bit of a weakness with left sided hip throws.

We did three sets of randori. I had a good set with Lex. I hit a pretty decent O Uchi Gari, He hit a pretty good Ko Uchi Gari. His gripping was better and made it more difficult for me to work to a dominant grip. he had one particularly good seoi Nage attack that had me up but I rode it and he couldn't finish it. One day He will get me over for it, but not today.

I was really happy with everyone's performance. Everyone coming up played hard but not crazy and had some good success. Even Austin after the half dozen or so classes he has had jumped in and did fine.

For Ne Waza I did the double under pass. Mostly well done and I could see some of them using it if they commit to the position.  Had to correct a few angles, but the biggest problem was many of them were letting their weight go too far across the body.

we did a few sets of Ne Waza. I took Allessandro and have to say he did quite well. I am looking forward to seeing him doing BJJ at the new place. He is very fast, and aggressive on the ground. he has som glaring technical holes but his fundamentals are sound and he will be a handful for any white or blue belt and will give some purples fits once he learns a few more positions he hasn't seen before.