Mizblog

Pam taught this Saturday morning class. I was coming off my first week with two BJJ classes since June, so my reserves were low. I also didn’t have much breakfast (just an early bowl of cottage cheese) so I ran out of energy really quickly, like in the first 3 minutes of class. I’ll harp on that throughout the description of the class, because it was important.

We started out running around the mat. I was behind Ivan, and he was going FAST! I tried to kind of keep up, but it was exhausting. By the time we started high knees, I knew I was in for some suffering. Pam was trying to figure out her music situation, and we went around a few times with high knees before she switched it up, but by that time I was already gassed. But I kept going, and we kept going, and finally, eventually, blessedly it was over.

Get water and come back with a partner and a belt. I got a yellow belt and grabbed Cory on his way back onto the mat, making him run first. Back and forth across the mat sprinting for 2 minutes, while our partner slowed us down by pulling on the belt which was wrapped around our waist. We got little rest breaks at the end as we turned around, and it was exhausting, but I can sprint way better than I can run steadily, so it wasn’t so bad.

Next we got a kick shield and held for knees and solid side control. 2 minutes each. Then we went back and forth across the mat, driving our partner back using knee strikes.

Kick shields away, we did defenses against all level 1 and level 2 chokes, including bear hugs.

Then we stood in front of each other and went 5 for 5 punching each other in the face, then in the body, then both. Cory is really nice about it.

Then we got in our ground fighting stance and repeatedly got up. We did a drill doing front kick from the ground, including mobility to defend against a circling attacker.

At the end, we had one person get in the middle on the ground, and a padholder would approach. They had to kick them away, then get up and attack. The rest of the people would hit with a pad for combative targets, or apply a choke and the middle person would have to do the defense. I was very last before the BJJ folks took the mat.

EDIT: It took everything out of me. I hit the wall in this class and kept on running. All afternoon, I was incapacitated and broke into tears a couple of times because I felt bad that I couldn’t tackle all my responsibilities because I was in such bad shape.