On the Mat Day 384: Back Attacks

Still raining pretty strong last night but a few people turned up to train. The new kid that came on Wednesday was there. It's common for guys who start out to come as much as possible then slowly fit into a number of times they can train which is usually somewhere from 3 to 0 times. Now that it's almost been 4 years since I started I look back and realize how many faces I've seen come and go. I can only image how many guys my instructor has seen drop out. I'll never do that because jiu-jitsu is such a huge part of my life now.

Um I only need my thumb taped

I sparred with Atsushi a couple of times. The first time I went to grab his collar he batted my hand away with his and hyper-extended my thumb. Hurt like hell at the time but I've had it worse on the other hand. It's stiff right now but there is no blood bruising to suggest the tendon was badly damaged so it should heal up fine in a week as long as I keep icing it. This year has been a bad one for minor injuries.

During sparring on Fridays, there are a group of guys who sit in the corner and drill through stuff with each ot
her. Me and Atsushi like to spar so are ready and waiting when the buzzer goes off but these guys just carry on drilling. One of them is injured so that's cool but I can't help thinking it's a little disrespectful to everyone else who is there to spar. We need more partners to spar with as it is. Instead we have to recycle through the 4 of us who were there to go at it. I understand the need for an easy night to chill out but why not just work your defense during sparring, and does it need to happen every single Friday night. I'm considering going Saturday instead so I get more people to spar with. Probably will happen after my last day at work when I get more time. I saw one of the guys get up once to spar with a white belt who is fairly good. He picked him apart and tapped him out 5 times. Played his A game only and didn't try anything new technique-wise. Sure it was probably cool to tap this younger guy out so many times but there will come a day when he gets better because you don't try new stuff or put yourself in unfamiliar positions. OK, I never rant about teammates but it sort of rubbed me the wrong way last night - rant done, over.

I stayed on for about 30 minutes and worked o-soto-gari, uchi-mata and seio-nage with Atsushi. He loves Judo because he has to do it in the police force. He told me that he had a competition that day for judo (probably to get points for grading up) and said he finished everyone on the ground. Said one guy was a big riot police scary type dude. But he used sumi-gaeshi then inverted armbarred him.

Sparring time: 6 x 6 mins = 36 mins