BJJ Day 4

Day 4

This is my 4th day back on BJJ. So, a couple of things I’ve learned so far.

1)    If you are out of shape, doing two days of BJJ back-to-back is not advisable! I found it hard to sleep that night because every time I moved in bed, the muscle soreness woke me up.
2)    I know enough to get in trouble. For example, while in my partners half guard I wanted to break my partner's grip on my leg to try and get to mount, however, I don’t remember the finer details of how to do that. So, in the end, I got swept.
3)    Defense, defense, defense and then more defense. A corollary to point two is that getting swept and not knowing what I’m doing results in a near constant barrage of attacks.
4)    If on the off chance I find myself in an advantageous position, I need to remain calm! Till I figure out wat what to do next.
5)    Subway is a poor lunch. I ended up feeling sick.
6)    The Ezekiel choke is a so simple that I’m surprised I hadn’t learned sooner!
7)    I’ve got to work on my flexibility.

Another thing that occurred was that on my third day the Professor (head coach) gave me the curriculum for white to blue belt. The curriculum contained a list of basic guard passes, sweeps, and other techniques that I need to be able to demonstrate to get from white belt to blue. Somethings on that list I know, but there is still about 30-40% that I’m unfamiliar with. I briefly talked to the professor about it, and he said: “consistently coming for 4-5 months should earn you a strip”. For those that don’t know the time between promotions in BJJ on average is two years. So, Strips on the belt are used to mark progress on your way to your next belt. Typically, you will need four stripes to get to the next belt.  I had three stripes when stoped in 2016, but I took them all off when I started again. Well, my goal/hope was to get a blue belt in about a year, considering I have had over a year of experience, so it was a bit of a blow when he said that it would take so long to get a stripe. However, I’ve got to remember; I’m doing this to control my weight.

My second stripe when I first started