Saturday 31 August 2013

On the Mat Day 404: A Former Blue Belt Returns

A guy who was a blue belt when I first started jiu-jitsu came back to the club to train. He popped in on Wednesday night but I didn't recognize him at the time. Then things clicked and I asked him if I knew him. His face had changed a little and he had dyed his hair. During drills he had forgotten how to do triangle and took a few moments before getting back into it. I remember sparring with him when I was white and being extremely aggressive and catching him with an armbar then later he controlling me in side control. He seemed really rusty but capable. Unfortunately I didn't get to spar with him. I was curious to how I would stand up against him but didn't want to be a douche and go over to ask him to spar and since there we were uneven numbers on the mat, I always seem to miss the opportunity to roll with him. Shame. Even now I am still curious.

The hardest roll yet the most interesting was with Miura, who is like a bull. He is very unorthodox.Grabbing the an arm or head and twisting or pretzelling in weird ways. I made the mistake of allowing him to control my head from my knee shield side control. Following a scuffle where I returned to butterfly guard and almost swept him (very happy with this attempt), I then tried to sweep in half guard but failed as he switched his hips and passed into a very heavy kesa-gatame and quickly forced my arm between his legs for a leg-scissors armbar. I could do with more practice sweeping with butterfly, I probably need to elevate more with my hips and feed their arm under them so they cannot post at all.

At the end I sat with Yanai and Koyama, and I rapidly fired off a lot of questions to them about certain techniques while getting K-sensei to remind me of certain movements like in the deep half, Z-guard, armdrag to Darce choke, X-guard. That was a fun part to pick both their brains, particularly when talking about dealing with heavy stronger opponents. I mentioned that I like to armdrag strong guys and take the back whenever possible and they both agreed this was a good tactic. It also got me thinking about how people last night have certain dominant attributes they use when rolling, Koyama is extremely flexible, Yanai is very nimble and quick on his feet, Miura has crazy upper body strength but I don't have any attribute that stands out, which says to me that I need to be more technical like Yoshida.

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