My BJJ Journey

Today we were fortunate enough to have Rodrigo Gracie in for a 4 hour seminar. I was disappointed last night as I couldn’t get out of work, and Rodrigo flew in early so he could teach the Friday night class at the gym. Today, with the gym full of eager jiu jitsu players, Rodrigo started us off doing standing headlock escapes to warm up our shoulders for what would be a seminar that centered around the omaplata Yay! I love the omaplata, it’s my favorite technique. Omaplatas are shoulder locks using the leg to isolate and attack the shoulder. First we started with an armbar escape where you spin, switch your hips and end up taking side control. After that, we countered the escape with an omaplata set up. From there, the person in the omaplata was supposed to try to posture up, and we counter with a very nice, and very very nasty armlock.

Then we practiced rolling out of omaplatas and transition back to guard, or into a triangle choke. While drilling this particular situation with Gus, I made the mistake of rolling over my head instead of my shoulder, and cranked my neck pretty good. I was pretty much done with the seminar at that point. It hurt, it was hard to move my neck, and I was miserable. So again, I sat on the sidelines as everyone else got to roll for the last 40 minutes.

All in all though, it was a good seminar. We learned some very cool things. And oh yeah, Rodrigo and Eric  deemed me worthy of my third stripe! So now, after 9 months of training, I am hopefully 1 stripe, and a seminar away from attaining my blue belt. So it was a high and a low day.  I’m still pretty excited. I’ve got new things to work on, and am 1 step closer to my goals.