BJJ Training

This is for BJJ training for 1-11-11. I was too tired to write yesterday.

First BJJ lesson of the year!!! After everyone made fun of my glasses, we did our warm up and then went into technique. Marcos show the De La Riva Guard and a sweep from the De La Riva.

The De La Riva is an awkward guard to me. It seems like you can tear up your knee with it; Marcos addressed this and said that our knees will toughen up and condition themselves to the rigors of the De La Riva.

I have always wanted to learn the De La Riva Guard. It seems like it is the next step in the guard fighting process, after mastering the basics of the closed, open, and spider guard. We drilled the move for about 30 minutes and Marcos was joking around with me and said that my De La Riva was looking good and was calling me Joaquin "Demente", who is a player that I look up too for his aggressive "Big Man" BJJ.

After drills we rolled. I rolled with one of the many Mikes we have at Team Yemaso, this Mike I call Asian Mike because he is Filipino. Mike is a Purple Belt and he is never afraid to roll with me and we had a good battle going back and forth. I almost submitted him but he transition out of it. Asian Mike pushes me and I like to think that I push him as well. Great Roll!!!

I also got to roll with Mike U. who is my greatest opponent at Team Yemaso. He has gotten very good, so good that most of the things I try do not work and I find myself constantly getting swept or reversed and then submitted. Somewhat discouraging, due to the fact that the battles used to be more 50/50.

I know that Mike U. has greatly benefited from private lessons with Marcos. I decided that I will start taking private lessons from Marcos at least twice a month; in one lesson alone I developed a game plan that I used to crush all the Mike in class and everyone else, until they all took privates and figured out counters to my game plan. So now it is time to step it up to that next level and I strongly believe that private lessons will aide in that goal.

Be blessed!!!!