End of Week

There were two normal Jiu-Jitsu nights to open up the week of training.

Then, last night, more good training followed by a wonderful set of rolling no-gi by the entire advanced class.

Today there is no formal instruction. It's called “open mat” time. Typically, I get there first, and maybe one or two others show up. Today was NOT typical. Shawn, our instructor texted me to come a little early to act as his grappling dummy while he worked on the next level of material that will be introduced to the class next year.

This is good training for me, too. After a bit, Tawha and Tobias showed up, and joined us for a while. Before too long, the White Belts Nathan and Sarah arrived looking for some help.

Tobias went with Nathan. They have been working together to get Nathan ready for his Blue Belt test, so that was logical.

Tawha went to work with Sarah on Straight-Armlock-from-the-Guard and Trap-and-Roll. A couple of times they called me over when Shawn got distracted by phone calls and such. Sarah is doing very well, but is very slight and lacks confidence that this stuff will really work for somebody as tiny as her. Tawha is also pretty small, so they wanted me to play the part of a big lump. Sarah rolled me around just like I knew she would, and seemed pleased as punch that her moves were working for real against somebody my size.

Eventually, Shawn finished off the stuff he wanted to inflict on me, and the rest of us just ran out of steam. The timing was good, as the Hapkido class were starting to arrive.

In walked Koko. She returned to university in Vancouver last weekend, but is back for a short visit. She has been working most of the summer on the extremely demanding BBS1 Gracie exam. She got the three big, 15-minute technique drill videos successfully recorded, as well as two of the three 5-minute sparring videos. She left with one lousy 5-minute video still to complete.

She was there to touch base with me about meeting up tomorrow to get it videoed. She has arranged for Cosme to play her partner, and wanted me there to act as outside eyeballs and to run the camera. We are set for around 10am in the morning.

What a wonderful end to the training week.