FIRST WORKOUT OF 2015

SATURDAY, 03 JANUARY 2015 Today marks the fifth year that we've been training at AFR. In an odd turn of events, the original group is mostly intact despite long hiatuses by some. Nick, Jason, and Dave are still here; Ethan is up in Virginia. When we started at AFR, I was a brown belt, Nick was a blue belt, Jason was a white belt, Dave was a white belt, and Ethan was a white belt. Today, I have a "seasoned" black belt professor; Nick is a three-stripe brown belt; Jason has two stripes on his purple belt; Dave has four stripes on his blue belt; I think Ethan has two stripes on his blue belt. We've also added a couple of people, lost some, added some more, and lost some. All in all, I am pleased with how we've progressed here. That being said, there were a total of seven (7) people in class on Saturday; Nick even brought a visitor to add to our group (Jason, John, Dave, and Paige). The topics of the day were escape from reverse kesa-gatame and escape from mount.

LOTS OF PEOPLE ON SATURDAY

SATURDAY, 18 OCTOBER 2014. My blue belt, Ethan, who now resides in Virginia because of his naval service, returned and participated in Saturday's classes. It is great to have him home, and we all look forward to his attendance over the next three weeks. We had a full house for Saturday morning's class. Ten people showed up for BJJ & judo at 8:00 a.m. I must admit that I am impressed with their dedication and desire to learn and train. For once, there was actually an excuse if a group rolled into another area while practicing. We had a "rainbow" of belts, with me (black), Nick (brown), Jason (purple), John J. (blue), Ethan (blue), Josh (white, 3-stripes), JG (white, 3-stripes), Paige (white, 3-stripes), Kyle (white, 1-stripe), and Tony (white, 1-stripe, though he is an ikkyu in judo). I covered various ways to defend against the americana and reviewed how to properly do the cross-collar choke from mount. In judo, it was a free-for-all with usage of the crash pad. Each participant (me, Nick, Ethan, Tony, Paige) worked the throw(s) that crossed their mind. We did not randori in judo.

SATURDAY, 27 SEPTEMBER 2014 BJJ & JUDO

At 8 a.m., we started BJJ. It consisted of me, Jason, John, JG, and Josh M. Yes, I was the odd man out since my name does not start with a J. I taught how to attack the turtle position, leading to an armbar and/or sweep from the attack. I also provided instruction on the turtle guard and how to recover to turtle position from there. Since my family was out of town, I had nothing to do that afternoon, so I had a pure judo class with Kyle and Paige. We covered o-uchi-gari and had a few rounds of randori to fill out the class.

SATURDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 2014

We were missing a BJJ brown belt and a BJJ blue belt, along with one white belt with competition aspirations for 27 September, but otherwise, we had a fairly full house (7 people) for an 8 a.m. class. I revisited a half-guard passing option and worked on teaching the finer details of applying pressure from side control. We then worked on moving efficiently and effectively from side control to kesa gatame, and from kesa gatame to side control. We then had a 20 minute round robin rolling session. For judo, we worked on ippon seio nage as the "throw of the day," though when we moved to the crash pad, each student had the option to use whatever throw they wanted on their opponent. We also did randori, permitting Kyle S. to have five 3-minute sessions for his upcoming tournament in Orlando on Saturday, 20 September.

JUDO TOURNAMENT (FOR THOSE INTERESTED)

FLORIDA YUDANSHAKAI STATE CHAMPIONSHIPS The tournament will be held on Saturday, 20 September 2014. ADDRESS: 5211 Hernandes Drive, Orlando, Florida 32808 (Boys & Girls Club of Central Florida). OPENING CEREMONIES: 11:00 A.M. CHECK-IN: 8:00 A.M. to 10:00 A.M. ENTRY FEE: $35.00 – Adults/Junior LATE ENTRY FEE: $ 50.00 Additional information can be found on www.orlandojudo.com

NO LONGER ASSOCIATE BJJ INSTRUCTOR FOR COMBAT ATHLETIX

As of this past Friday, 15 August, I resigned my position as the associate BJJ instructor at Smiley's Combat Athletix. James Smiley is still a great friend of mine (we had lunch today, in fact), and there is no ill will between the two of us. He and I will continue to support the growth of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in the Jacksonville area.

SATURDAY, 16 AUGUST 2014 BJJ

Our class time was moved back to 1:30 p.m. because AFR was testing their students for promotions. We had a full house, at least for us, with nine people in attendance, including one of Kyle's friends (Shane T.) who is a blue belt that trains Gracie Combatives in Mandarin. I covered how to properly do the seatbelt from the back and the basic methodology behind the clock choke. I asked Nick to teach the bow-and-arrow choke as a modification of the clock choke and also to show basics of the spider guard. We skipped judo and ended up rolling for nearly an hour. All in all, it was a good class.