Martial Farts

The dojo didn’t officially open until today (Sunday) but a bunch of crazies got together and opened the school last night for a bit of top secret training.

I had been suffering from a lingering cold, but it was just at the stage where I knew hoped a good training would blast it right out of my nose tubes.

It was a good little group, including Tomari-sensei, and after a light warmup we got straight down to business… rolling! The stereo was broken which sucks big time, but after a few minutes we got used to silence punctuated by grunts and giggles and the sound of cloth screeking over wrestling mats.

I had a few good rolls with people. I was thinking about what I wrote the other day, about whether or not it was good that I had to make things up from scratch every time I roll because I am such a forgetful person, and I decided, it’s awesome! I think that way I can do things that have people scratching their heads, which is always good.

I managed to pass Ide-san’s guard and worry him from side control for a while, which is a rare feat. I managed to triangle Ayukawa-san (purple belt) which was a first. I better not tell you about the ten times he submitted me, though.

Tomari-sensei made complete mincemeat out of me, bow-and-arrowing choking me not once, not twice, but thrice in a row, and showing off his fancy new jumping balancing surfing guard pass. Poo.

Later we had an impromptu competition, more as referee training than anything else, and I was matched up against Ayukawa-san. He calmly and quickly got his revenge by triangling me off a botched guard pass. The man is dangerous from literally anywhere, it is awesome.

Then, today, I went with Sam and Patrick and our respective missuses to Isami and splurged crazy money on fukubukuros, Isami-style!

They had a gi lucky bag and a t-shirt lucky bag. Basically, for what you would normally pay for a gi, they stuff a bag with a gi and a bunch of other random stuff. I got an Atama rash guard, a random pair of Isami fight shorts, a Reversal patch, and a brown Reversal belt. The belt I swapped with Patrick, who got a white belt, as I already have a nice black belt from last year. Sam got himself a nice gi with a load of gubbins including Arte Suave 1 on DVD, nice!

Then, being evil and naughty and weak and soon-to-be-penniless, I bought the T-shirt bag, too. I had my fingers crossed that this would be worth it and it totally was. I basically got five t-shirts for the price of one, including Reversal’s Chute Boxe, plain logo and Isami tees, a Kiguchi Dojo (Gomi’s dojo) tee, and a Sengoku tee.

Episode 4 of Grappling Dummies TV was going to be our dojo’s new years party but I just had too much footage in too high a quality for my computer to handle. I’m currently converting some sparring footage from last night into manageable chunks so stay tuned for more BJJ TV goodness!