6.20.08

Open Mat

I am not going to count tonight as a training session. Not having anything scheduled on Friday makes a long trip over to GT for me... some nights open mat is packed, other nights not so much. It seems the summer months seem to slow down. I got there about 6:30 and there were only 4 guys rolling and Jeremy was working with Andrew on his stand up. I rolled for about 10 minutes with Rob, not THE Rob, but another Rob. 235 pounds or so, blue belt, Rob is really strong and powerful, especially his hips. His game has grown leaps and bounds since the last time I rolled with him. He was able to throw his sweep from guard and then go to mount and begin working s-mount arm bar. His position wasn't quite perfect on those, but pretty damn good. Before he just worked out of guard, triangle, arm-bar, etc. Once you passed his guard he was out of his comfort zone. Now, his guard is much, much better and harder to pass and his obviously more comfortable getting off his back.

After rolling for a few minutes we watched Jeremy's brother do some amazing jits. Then I went to the boxing class with Badger. Since it was Friday night, nobody was there. So I spent an hour or so of one on one time with Badger. We worked on my stance - which still isn't right. Then we worked on some left jabs, then moved to right cross. I worked into a solid 1-2 combo. From there we added the left hook and I fell apart. I need to work on the left hook. After 30 minutes or so of glove work, we moved over to a heavy bag to work on some kicks. We did right and left front kicks. Then things got sloppy. Right and left roundhouse kicks... needless to say my 7 year old son kicks harder with his left leg then I do. It was a fun class though, I am looking forward to going every Friday now. Badger was an amazing coach and showed lots of genuine concern and patience for me.