I'll give y'all one guess as to where I went today. I'm not gonna lie, I got interested in BJJ from watching MMA fights. I've slowly acquired a taste for watching the sport, and honestly, I've come to accept that all fights pretty much end up on the ground and might suck. But a few don't, even when they hit the ground, and that's because of submission magicians.
Got there a little late, but I was in time for some 'agilities,' i.e. rolling across the floor. Sucked unequivocally at those. My attempts at cartwheels are not for sore eyes.
For the drills, I paired up with a guy who was unfortunately a lot shorter than I am, albeit very stocky. (Incidentally, I think I'm one of the tallest people in the club.) He'd done a little BJJ before so he tried to help me out.
We covered shrimping, rolling, the kimura (from guard), the armbar (from mount), shrimping out of mount, and bridging out of mount. Sucked at all of them, but a few times used my size advantage to buck off the other guy. 'Whoops.'
Rolled afterward, first with the drill partner. We just kept practicing a few more drills.
Then we switched it up, and the other guy kinda instructed me as we rolled. The first time, he got me into his guard and talked me through while I got out of it and onto my feet. Second round, he got mount on me and then, when I got out, he got my back and choked me out. Third round, as he kept talking to me, I managed to get into mount and grab both of his wrists. We struggled a bit, and then I intentionally let go of one wrist to see what would happen. He immediately got the other wrist free and began to shake me off, so I grapevined him and surprisingly got a submission. 'Yay.' Rolled for about 12 minutes in all before heading to dinner.
Rolling is very tiring, but the pressure is definitely different from standing toe-to-toe in boxing. The motions aren't sudden and violent (though they can obviously be painful and effective), and there's the tapping out thing, so I could breathe normally for the most part. And of course, since there's minimal risk of actual concussion, I can kinda use my full strength.
Looking forward to going again. Still probably won't stay the whole time for rolling because I wanna dining hall it for dinner, but it's really fun. Though I might think it's less fun after getting my ass kicked over and over and discovering my flexibility, core strength, and endurance truly suck ass.
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