Unified Training day at the gym! Got members from all 4 locations onto our mat and it was packed. Great to see everyone though.
Techniques: Each professor, starting with mine (Bruno Frazatto) showed a mount escape. They started simple (Upa, shrimping into guard replacement) and worked into more complex (balance displacement into Single Leg X-Guard, elbow escape after working out of high mount).
Reflections: It’s always good to have options, but at my level it’s even better to have concepts. The core takeaway I got from the seminar was a discussion of base— how people get mount, the ways they try to keep it, and the escapes you can try depending on the style of mount (low mount, high mount, grapevined, etc). I’ve said on here before that I feel I always need more tools in the toolbox to figure out solutions to problems in Jiu Jitsu, and this gave me both a plan to work through mount escapes and, hopefully, some ability to execute that plan.
Oh, and I got a third stripe on my white belt. I know that stripes ultimately don’t matter and that belts ultimately don’t matter etc etc BUT
It is nice to have some external validation for an internal struggle. Coming back from my injury and from having a baby into a regular training schedule and attempting to advance to somewhere near competency has been difficult. I honestly didn’t think I’d get a stripe today but since I did, I’m damn sure going to earn it.
