journeyjjbluebelt

After two weeks of rest, I wasn’t ready for the throwing class so I put it off.  Why? I didn’t feel confident about my falling ability.  I am older than most students so I need to be sure that I am limber enough to move around.   It is important that you feel confident about your actual ability to break a fall.  As a general rule, every time I attend, I warmup with falling exercises. In the future, I’m planning to practice falling on a beach because of the soft sand.

However, I did go to sparring this week.  Back in December, I took my first sparring class. It felt like an MMA event.   I had four opponents and two were overly aggressive.  I had never seen them.  I was fighting for survival.   At the end, I was completely exhausted and had marks all over my body and face.  I violated the rule, To fight the slow fight, and conserve energy.

So, for the second sparring class, the one on Thursday, I took the advise of other students to conserve energy and not be overly aggressive. I communicated better with my opponents.  The 2nd class was more staged.  If one person wins passing the guard, you are supposed to stop resisting, wait, wait for them to move,  and then you react.  I didn’t have any injuries.  For my first and second class, I admit that I was using everything but  Jiu Jitsu.  I used a judo pin with a choke hold.  I used wrestling moves.   Next sparring class, I will try to only use Jiu Jitsu.  If I can do a throw, it will be from the clinch.  Professor Pedro Jr. made it clear that he doesn’t want to see any throws that aren’t from the clinch.