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Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Daily Submission

Last night, I went to a new gym to try out some BJJ. I have grappled for years and even did some informal BJJ with a Gracie JJ Blue belt back around 97. However, this would mark the first time I went to a dedicated, formal BJJ class. Having never formally trained in BJJ and not trained in it at all in about 10 years, I grabbed my trusty white belt and headed out.

The gym I went to is Zugec Ultimate Martial Art (www. zuma.tv) and the instructor was Adam Zugec, a Brown Belt under Marcus Soares as well as a Combat Submission Wrestling instructor under Erik Paulson. The gym was large but packed. He has a lot of students. I only noticed 2 blue belts and they were the highest belts I saw next to Adam's. Soares is notoriously stingy with his belts and his blues seem to be very advanced blues.

Class started quickly with hook sweeps from the butterfly guard. The theme for the day seemed to be Butterfly guard. This was good because it is probably one of my weakest guards. Next we moved on to transitioning from butterfly, to half guard and taking the back. After drilling that for awhile, we moved to a clock choke and a few variations.

The pace of the class is very fast. I had worked up a very good sweat. After this we went straight into rolling. I started rolling with a white belt (there were a lot of them). As usual my wrestling and judo background helped me. I was tired as hell but my ability to scramble and my control allowed me to remain competitive. I also tapped him with an arm triangle, which is my go to submission.

I would have loved to roll more, but over an hour of grappling without a break took it toll on me. As usual, I neglected my cardio over the winter so, I gassed.

Lessons learned:
Time to hit the treadmill.
Position, position, position. If I wasn't a position over submission grappler, I would have been tapped a lot.

Hopefully, I will get back this thursday and last a little longer this time.

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