I made it to the academy on Friday - and while it counts as training per my definition (i.e., I wore the gi and sweated) - the truth of the matter is that tonight was my first real session on the mat in about three weeks (May 16 was my last real training, the Monday before the Revolution).
A lot of good things tonight. Ruben got his brown belt (parabens!), Paulao and a bunch of other folks got stripes, and the Monday night judo class has been incorporated into the regular Monday BJJ class. This is great news. I've been wanting to take the judo class, but the starting time was just too early for me (and apparently for more than a few others). So the current solution is ideal.
We worked on breakfalls and rolls in the first part of the judo class, then trained the ouchi gari takedown.
The BJJ part of the class focused on the pendulum sweep from deep half (we started from standing and included the deep half guard pull as part of the training) and the toe grab/Old School/Gordo sweep from half guard. Here, Rodrigo showed one excellent detail in stepping over with the leg and then going belly down as you flatten out and piledrive forward into the sweep. Definitely something to work on with my Gordo sweep.
Live Training was great. I trained twice for about 8 minutes each, first with Ruben and then with a talented young guy Anton, who'd trained some sambo and Japanese jiu jitsu. It was fun to fight off leg attacks (a couple of ankle locks) and I'll confess to spending (more than) a few hours watching the Mundial this weekend didn't hurt at all in that regard.
162.1 on the scale post-train. Given the time I've been off the mat, that's a great number. I still have a featherweight fantasy that I indulge from time to time but, for now, I'll take what I can get.
