12 September

Last months explorations was quite dense because I came of a one month break, but since I’ll have less to say this month I’m reverting to the old exploration format.

I haven’t done as well as I would like these past days. I partly blaim the fact that I had no internet to fuel me with ideas of things to try out, a situation that is now thankfully over. We’re still working on Collar & Sleeve mechanics but it’s starting to be tiresome, I’d like to work on other things. There’s now a steady flow of new students, we’ll see in a while who ends up staying.

Ten days until Copenhagen! I can’t wait, it’s going to be awesome.

Next week Salah will start at his new position at FitnessBox 67 and only teach twice a week. the owner of Gracie Barra asked me if I’d be interested in teaching, but my thoughts on this deserve their own post.

A colleague of mine has a blind son. I usually don’t try to sell BJJ to people around me but mentionned we now offer kids class and that it’s something he could do, and even do well. His son enjoyed the first session last week so they should be back for more tonight. I’m really glad the kid liked it and hope he sticks to it, as it will undoubtly be hard over time.

17 September

The lesson we covered yesterday was another collar & sleeve defense and counter. When the passer frees his arm controlled by the foot on biceps, he can grab that same leg and use it to cross pass. This was in turn countered my getting a lasso on the remaining arm and the re-guarding. As often these last weeks I was paired with a beginner which is fine, although they feel pretty lost out there. Covering something as advanced as collar & sleeve certainly doesn’t help and I hope for their sake that we’ll do some basics soon. Maybe on the days were Salah is away, I’ll see on thursday.

I felt very solid during sparing. I managed to be very active in all positions, I tried the Reverse De La Worm guard for the first time and it felt very natural. I’m still working on the Santana-style passing strategy. Sometimes I get it to work but more often than not I end up in a triangle. It’s apparently for a lack of shoulder pressure leaving too much range of motion for the under-leg.

Like at last seasons start I feel some pain in my elbows after the fourth or so weekly training. I even had a fifth session last week on saturday but had to stop early because of it. It might be some kind of tendinitis or tennis elbow, but it went away last year after a couple of weeks so hopefully that will be the case here too. I also hope it won’t bother me during the fall camp, now less than a week away!

Ahmed still isn’t back from Belgium and might actually stay there :(. It’s probably not too bad for him because he has a job there but I miss him, and I miss having a super bad ass open guard player to look up to. Salah is getting pretty solid at this kind of game but it doesn’t feel the same.