Monday, October 26, 2009

Operation Blue Belt, Day 1

So I'm officially an Alliance Blue Belt now under Jacare.
The test went pretty smoothly, we attended the normal saturday class at Alliance, worked a slick open guard pass, did some open guard rolling drills where I swept a black belt much to my satisfaction but got totally ownaged by most of the blues and purples. After that I got to roll with one of the other blue belts whom I ran a clinic on. He seemed really nervous or dehydrated or something though, his hands were really shakey...
After that the folk who were testing were pulled aside and Jacare ran the heavier guys through their techniques while Cobrinha (Who is awesome and very friendly) ran us lighter guys through our stuff. We just went down the list demonstrating the techniques on each other. I got a couple of "very nice" compliments from Cobrinha and it was all a lot easier than I thought it would be. I didn't blank on anything and ended up with a Blue Belt. Hurray!

That was Saturday, today was my first class as a blue and it was No Gi, so I didn't get to wear it. But with that in mind my goal is not to let any white belts tap me for a while. That doesn't mean being stupid and refusing to tap when some white belt as an armbar fully extended. It means I'm going to roll calm and careful and not get into positions like that. I did a good job of that today making even Casey work to get past my guard and sub me. I even managed to pass his guard once.
Rolled with Vinni as well who should have tested with us for blue and can legitimately be called a blue belt. He's also one of our Ammy fighters. I climbed all over him with sub attempts, and swept him a couple of times. I felt really good about the roll with him as well.

I also rolled a with a new kid who is here for like his second day I think... I ran a clinic on him just to demonstrate how cool JiuJitsu is, then taught him how to properly open guard and told him to work exclusively on that for a while.

It was a good day.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

BLUE BELT COUNTDOWN!

So I haven't updated because of a combination of work business, shoulder and knee injury, and working on getting ready for my upcoming Blue Belt test.

Haven't done any weight lifting in a couple of weeks and had to skip a couple of BJJ classes because of some shoulder and knee injuries. They are cleared up and tonight we are reviewing everything we'll need for the guys testing for blue this saturday.
If possible I will video my test and put it up here for folks to check out.