On the Mat Day 202: Breaking the Closed Guard

It would seem that autumn is not a good month for me. three kids in the house and a train full of snot blowing commuters in the morning means that I cannot avoid the cold virus. I've been away from training a week. It gave me an opportunity to mend my broken immune system and start learning how to play the guitar (which is really hard!). I must confess that I didn't read a BJJ or watch anything on my PC or TV that was BJJ related. I'd lost touch with it for a week, and that made me ponder whether I needed it in my life. Should I quit? I thought. Is it still fun for me? These are questions I ask myself only when I am not standing on the mat. I got to thinking about why I really do BJJ and the answer to this question has changed so much over my time studying it. I think the bottom line is that I use BJJ to de-stress and have fun. I now know that I will never be an amazing BJJ player and wow people with my amazing techniques but I do enjoy the comraderie with my team mates and that feeling of refreshed content weariness after training.

There were no white belts last night during class but we worked on breaking the closed guard and moving to passing immediately. Some guy came to watch the class. I heard K-sensei assuring him that we have a few over 40 year olds at our gym who do well. I wish we have more new starters. It's just that BJJ appears to be a rough and tumble martial art to get into and many Japanese think it is the same as Judo, and that's only for shaven-headed cauliflower-eared teenagers right?

Sparring was ok-ish. It's the least I can expect after taking time off. I got battered around a lot. I continue to go for x-guard and deep half though and hate it when I end up using closed guard. It is so static but against a strong opponent it gives me a chance to stall them. I need to work on better attacks from the closed guard against a strong opponent.

Sparring time: 6 x 6 mins = 36 mins

Notable moments: Doing different X-guard sweeps that worked really well.

Focused on: Breathing and being calm in bad positions