My First Gi

Yesterday Micah brought in a couple old Gi tops and a pair of pants for me to use in our BJJ training.

Seriously I'm super geeking-out about it, because I've never had a real gi before. Just one bought from a thrift store we dyed black and used for a ninja costume when I was a kid.
Sure they are old and tatterred and used - but they are REAL and they are USEFUL and being USED to train Brazilian Jujitsu. I've wanted to train some martial art for my whole life so this finally makes it more real to me.

And yes - I DID put it on and strut around the house for a while last night showing off for the wife and kids!

They were of course, extremely impressed. (ha)

Another First: "My First Breaking of Someone's Bones"

A few weeks ago in BJJ we were working on a scissor sweep when someone is in your guard. One of my first bosses at my job had joined the class, he had recently started at a BJJ gym as well and was looking for some more practice. He's bigger than me so he didn't have any problem throwing me pretty far with the scissor sweep (which isn't really the point, but it can be good I guess!) - anyway somehow his arm got put in a weird position as he swept me and my back landed on his thumb. BAM. We thought it was just dislocated, and he had a splint on it for a few days. It kept bugging him so he went and got it x-rayed and it looks like to fix it so he can actually use his thumb will take some fairly extensive surgery ($7k). Yikes! Also since it was on company property and whatnot - it IS a workers comp issue whether he wants to claim it or not. Hopefully that won't be the end of the BJJ classes here.
Luckily we have one of the HR Directors who has come, and he thinks it was a freak thing and not common, as BJJ is very careful and controlled and frankly less dangerous than any of the other things we have available like Crossfit, Climbing Wall and weights.



Yesterday in BJJ we practiced the following - using the Gi tops (kimono) and some old shirts and long sleeve jackets for the chokes.

The usual warmups – shrimps, s-walk, sprawls, etc
1 leg looping the arm drill (should find a better description, ha!)
1 flowing armbar drill (seen in this video at about 0:51 - we also did the spin around leg drill a while back - that was fun (1:22))
Gi and t-shirt choke with one hand grabbing behind other hand over first hand (palm down) AND other hand under first hand (palm up)(also from Mount) ((not guard, ha!)
“Hockey shirt” choke – gathering shirt material to simulate 1st choke
Sleeve chokes – their sleeve; your sleeve (Ezekiel choke), other rope/clothes/whatever
Jacket corners choke
Choke from the back - This is the one I remember least.

I add those here to mostly remember and have at LEAST a written reminder. If I can find a good way to video these I want to get the Mat Time with Micah videos going again... We'll see what we can do.

This morning I went to Yoga and planned to climb on the wall for a while afterwards - but the Wellness coordinator had accidentally taken the wall keys home with her and she wasn't there in time for me to be able to climb. Doh. Instead I did some Preacher Curls, some Machine Incline Bench Presses, and some wide-grip pullups.

We'll see if I regret that in an hour when I go to Crossfit! It's been about a month since I've been to Crossfit. Hopefully I don't die.

(I'm really not worried.)

I have a painful muscle tweak right inside my right scapula and a toothache up inside one of my crowns... I love how I ALWAYS have some little tooth issue about a week before my Dentist appointment - and on Fridays when they aren't in! Oh well - Hopefully the pain goes away - I've had issues with this crown before.
That might make Crossfit interesting. We'll find out!