Oh man the Sun is shining and finally, British summer is here!
So of course I spent the gorgeous Saturday indoors - on the mat.
After photographing last week's no-gi session I was inspired to take part this week and I really loved it. I was worried that doing no-gi would detract from my gi game, but I was also worried about me not getting enough mat time. So I figured it was better to train no-gi than not do anything.
After the no-gi class, which was a hell of a work out, there was open mat where I sparred (avec the gi) continuously for about 40 mins. I love open mat. I get the chance to drill some techniques that have been on my mind and I get to spar with guys that I don't normally spar with during the week night classes (ie the bigger fellas). BTW I also sparred with Domonique who I partner fairly regularly and she was on absolute fire on Saturday taking my back on several occassions and submitting me twice! Her fellow opponents at the forthcoming British BJJ Open had better look out!
As to my question about whether no-gi affects my gi game at all? I can safely say that the adjustments I needed were fairly minor (so far anyway) and I was able to spar pretty much the same as I do with the gi - although the absence of sleeve grips completely takes away my some of my open guard work, which is probably a good thing as I was getting too reliant on this.
Yep, Saturdays look like a good slot to add to my training schedule, so I'll at least be able to train x3 a week in the build up to the aforementioned British Open.
I have to give a shout-out again to the guys flying out today to LA in preparation for the World BJJ Championships - good luck to you all, Britain expects bling!
Some of them will be wearing my Galo and Pluma BJJ group gi patch (above) so I'm very proud of 'em.
It seems that BJJ logos that go the anthropomorphic route (which appears to be a large percentage of them) always try to look tough, snarling or growling, normally with big muscles.
ReplyDeleteIf I ever had a club, I'd love to have a really camp pink squirrel looking terrified (or maybe extra cutesy) clinging onto a G, or something like that.
The Estonian SBG guys did something along those lines in their elbow escape video, which was cool. Hopefully they wear those in competition. :D
Call it 'short-stature-syndrome' but I like to think my logo is more fighting cock than old mother hen.
ReplyDeleteSBG logo is cool though.
Handbags at dawn anyone?
PS. How do you do url links via the comments page. I tried before and failed.
Handbags at drawn, surely? *cue groan*
ReplyDeleteFor links: [a href="www.urlhere.com"]link[/a], but with <> instead of []. The target="_blank" thing to make it open in a new window doesn't work in comments, so maybe that's what went wrong before?