11/26/2010 - Roadtrip!

The day after thanksgiving Marco invited us to train at his main club and work off some of the previous days feasting. Eric, Lex and I took advantage. The drive was easy and we made good time. Eric met us there. We had a slight snafu because the address we had was the old address, but the new location was just down the street so it was easy to go there. Marco has an excellent spot. Big facility with plenty of mat space, lots of windows, and right on a corner, so he gets plenty of traffic. He uses very high quality puzzle mats which are good for falling but a little tackier than I have become used to using. The surface was very consistent though and had plenty of give. Taking a lot of falls would have been fine.

When we got there, it was all no gi training. Lex and Eric both had theirno gi kits with them. I, being a gi person never thought to bring even a short sleeved t shirt. I will in rare instances roll no-gi, but my preference is clearly for the gi game. I do think I should do more no gi training jsut top more round out my game. There are a few things i am slow recognizing because they are so much more prevalent in no-gi training.

Marco went and grabbed his gi and we rolled. we warmed up by just kind of flowing through positions. As we got warm it became a bit more competitive and we started playing harder. One of the times I pulled he managed to catch a guillotine. I tend to be a little slow defending guillotines as I usually escape them easily with a gi on. I rolled to come to the top and he was ahead of me. I tried a few different ways to unwind it but he had too tight of a bite and I tapped.

                                  
We started again and were moving through positions for awhile. We exchanged top and bottom several times. once I managed to get to the top and passed to the mount. I dug in and caught a choke from the top. We broke after that. It was a good set. I get lazy defending some positions and the only way I get better at escaping/avoiding them is to pay the price getting caught.  It was a 10+ minute set or so. I like open mat training  - doing long sets until you feel like stopping.

There was another senior player there. A brown belt named K. I think he was a little younger than me, though not too much. I would have pegged him as about my weight. He admitted to 245 so i may have ahd a couple of pounds on him, but he felt heavier than that. Regardless of his actual weight he was extremely strong, definitely isometrically stronger than me. I pulled and played my sweep game. I was satisfied with the results. I had to grip fight to keep him from crushing me and keep him in front but then I swept with the hook sweep I use as my preferred start position.  I managed to pass and work to the mount. I went for a strangle and he reversed me to inside my guard. I stayed closed. He didn't go to pass as much as I would have. He went for several strangles from inside my guard, mainly a thrusting choke but, i was able to keep him from putting too much pressure on me. We worked from here for awhile I avoided the pass several times and was able to sweep once or twice more. I hit the De La Riva entangled arm sweep. It was really tough getting him over, but, I managed to do it. He almost crushed me but i was able to take the squish long enough to get an off balance and hit the sweep. Felt good hitting a good technique against a big, strong, skilled player. I came up and had the arm trapped like I like to do from this sweep. I attacked the other arm, going for the ude garame from 2 on 1. I'm pretty good about maintaining base, but I let myself get a little high and he tossed me off and came up. I turned away from the side control position and defended the mount. He attacked some subs and mount attacks that I had to scramble to avoid. we were here for awhile him on the attack and me defending. I made it back to turtle for awhile and he attacked me there. I went for a couple of trap and rolls, but finally had to settle for coming out from underneath. I passed in the transition and made sure to go to a top corner hold down as I had no desire to be dwarf tossed to the bottom all over again. I stayed for awhile there and ground out a papercutter choke. The set was long probably 15 minutes or so. I think we were both surprised the other guy wasn't more fatigued. Big older guys are used to other big older guys getting tired and making mistakes, when you run into another one that can do long sets it's a bit of a surprise.

All in all, it was a great time. Eric and Lex both had some excellent training. Marco gave Lex some attention and good advice in his no gi training. Saw some old friends and had a good day. Looking forward to doing it again some time soon. It was suggested that we organize some back and forth training between the Judo and BJJ players at Osagame to have fun and help us all get better. Sounds good to me.