Friday the 13th. 22 days until Arnolds. GVSU adventure.

I got a message from Kiely that Clint was going to run the GVSU grappling/mma class. Being that its 10 minutes from my house I thought I would mix things up a bit and go check out this no-gi experience.

Clint ran a typical version of his intense cardio. The young tough co-eds groaned and winced as we sprinted, squatted, shrimped, and strength trained. It felt good (being old and fat) to run by most of the kids smiling. My cardio and endurance is definitely improving throughout all of these grueling workouts.

Big Dawg started out showing everyone a cool takedown. When someone grabs your head, you drag their arm off your head by bowing and pushing with your same side arm cupping their elbow. You push their elbow forward. You then go for an ankle pick on their near leg. You will rarely hit this pick on anyone with any reasonable ability. More likely they will sprawl their near leg back. This leaves the back leg WIDE open for the pickens. You pick their ankle while PUSHING with your hand still cupped on the guys elbow/tricep. SWEET.

Clint then showed what to do after the takdown. He showed to move towards the guy (like your going into his butterfly guard) REALLY tight. You need to pin his feet on his ass. He will likely push your head to one side and its pretty easy to just jump over the enemy's knees into side control.

We then did the opposite point of view, if you have butterfly guard. Clint showed a sweep he had shown GRBJJ before. where you wrap your arms around the guys head and arms high, then roll back and extending your legs. You then finish by easily rolling right or left into full mount. I learned a while back drilling this move that you can spine lock the shit out of the guy during this movement if you want to. This is unfortunately illegal in pretty much all grappling competitions =(

We finished up by live rolling. I had a very fun roll with Abbie, and a couple other GVSU guys. What they lacked in refined technique, they made up for in youth, power, and energy. My old tired body had to use all of the BJJ I learned to control these guys. Abbie on the other hand simply kicked my ass and armbarred me like 4 times.

This was a fun time! I am SOOOO sore though. My thighs are burning...not just from tonight, but from all the last couple of weeks workouts. I am going to listen to my body and skip tomorrows regular class. I don't know if it's normal to feel guilty for ONLY going to 5 classes this week, but I do! I can't risk injury though with only 3 short weeks until my destiny calls.