805BJJ Class 5: turtle tipping again, rear collar choke, roll, guard passing

This Thursday morning class was mostly a repeat of my first class, last Tuesday morning. We had a good warm up before Mark arrived, and then we got into the turtle riding position again. I first partnered with Leo to practice just the choke. I switched to partnering with Christian II, who was so new he didn’t have a gi yet and was wearing Mark’s gi top.

From the basic choke, we went to the turtle tipping. Starting with Leo. He kept tipping me and rolling me to the wrong side. I’m probably really heavy compared to these littler guys. They weigh like 150 lbs and I weight 230 lbs. That’s about half again what they weigh. Anyway, doesn’t matter with the collar choke. Wish I had shaved before.

Next I partnered with Josh, the little devil. His collar choke was insanely tight, and he was not reluctant to bruise the shit out of my neck in sinking it in tight. Very Krav Maga. Can’t say I didn’t appreciate it though. He shared his secrets with me, and I hope I got better by the end.

Finally I partnered with Chad. Found out he’s 45 years old, so I’m still the old man but not THAT much older than the rest of the guys. He’s a blue belt from another school and he’s trying to un-learn all the stuff he got from there until Mark and Christian teach it here.

At the end of class we did some free rolling. I started with Leo, and he’s crafty but my weight advantage kept him from doing a lot of what he wanted to do. He knew enough to know what he wanted to do though, and that’s more than could be said for me. I find that my size and weight advantage is actually a disadvantage when it comes to learning BJJ. I can get away with awful technique and I don’t have to learn from it. My goal is to still try to learn from it.

After the first roll, I was left without a partner so I went to watch Christian teach Christian how to pass the guard. It was the original closed guard break and pass that Jimmy taught us at UCLA so many years ago, but I had completely forgotten it. Hopefully it will come back quickly. I’m going to try it in my next few rolls.

Next week, Christian is going to bring me knee pads.

Comments Off on 805BJJ Class 5: turtle tipping again, rear collar choke, roll, guard passing

Comments are closed.