Feb 3/16 Wed BJJ

Seriously though I’m like 10 days behind.

Between sickness, injuries, baby and him getting sick, family stuff and other work life opportunities this blog is behind… not that it matters. Only random BJJ gibberish anyway.

Homies be like what what… got to LEMMA around 5:15 pm this day….

In my head I was like what was the point… wasn’t gonna roll anyway. Either way, I bought a new wrist support brace system from Shoppers… thought I was gonna roll. Popped ibuprofen before I headed to the gym, which was great… ibuprofen, helped out for the warm up and pretty much throughout the course of the night actually.

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#ibuprofen

Mike ran the warm-up, with standard running around the mats, inside/outside karaoke, forward/reverse shrimps, forward/reverse rolling, bear crawls, and possibly others… I forget lol.

Thor then had us review lateral drop throw… got a nice video below for reference.

Partnered with Tony and repped that out… tonnes lol

Thor then had us review the inside leg trip when your partner defends by stepping around to defend the throw… nice reference video below.

Partnered with Tony and repped that out… tonnes again lol

Thor then got us to review the flower sweep which we repped out… one of the newer white belts joined us for this session of review. Poor guy still trying to figure this out. Complete resistance of working technique lol… white belt stuff. Being a horrible training partner. It was ok for me, definitely won’t help other white belts lol, by resisting that much, especially when all you are doing is trying to figure out the movements. Yes I told him…

#theyalllearn

lol

The reference I always use for my variation of this sweep below…

Then it was the rolling arm bar when your partner post to defend the flower sweep… a  good video reference is below.

We then rolled… I’ll be honest, I wasn’t planning on rolling, but one of our black belts invited me to roll. When a black belt ask you to roll, you roll, regardless. Our rolling session below.

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Jan 25/16 Mon BJJ

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Wow tone of new guys and gals OMT…

https://www.instagram.com/p/BA_MI8DpgIe/

Show up and train…

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#greatclass

Class was a great… had a visitor from Toronto, Natasha. Trains at Body of Four, with Mike Aviado and those group of killers. Have only met him a few time at the Ontario Open, seems like a great guy, even have him a a BJJ Facebook friend lol… hoping to roll with him one day.
Thor had us do a standard warm-up, then he got us to review a closed guard back take, then a closed guard arm-bar. Fan-freaking-tastic. I didn’t roll, due to my wrist. Could barley do a few of the warm-up exercises… still tried.

Partnered with Mitch… kid is picking up things quick. Training hard and a lot had his first competition not too long ago… i commend him. Competition isn’t for the weak. We repped out the back take, then the arm-bar quite a few times.

#everyonehasaprice

Word… Thor’s recruited a few potential BJJer’s from his work. Fan-freaking-tastic, had an extra Gi to lend one of them. That I’ve only worn once. I have the identical Gi in an A0 and all patched up… It’s an A1 in case I ever gain the weight back and need it to be IBJJF legal.

#Truth

I Gi hoard, truth i think of weird stuff like that. Especially if you like the style and brand. Fact is the A0, I still use in my rotation regularily, so you never know. But… I had an extra Gi to lend.

Turned out homie wanted to borrow it for a week. lol
That’s like lending your under wear out…  yeah no lol.

Either-way, I told the new guy that I’ll be taking it home and washing it right after. He asked if he could borrow it for a week or so until he figured out buying a Gi . In which I said no… I like my Gi’s cleaned regularly with after every use. I remember my first Gi as a white belt. It sure as hell wasn’t and I bought it, if I was lent one… I would have treated it worse. I ended up throwing it away, a Royal blue Reevo, very old model with no patches lol. He then asked if whether I would sell it… the following things popped into my head.

  • I have this exact GI one in a A0…
  • I wasn’t really gonna gain any extreme weight back…
  • I wore this particular Gi only once…

I offered it to him for $150 Canadian, which I thought was fair under the circumstances, I wasn’t in no way going to lend it to him for a week lol weird… especially since I didn’t even know him or whether he would return, or how he would actually treat it… He said that he would think about it and let me know after class. I agreed. I also lent him a white belt, which was my very first one… I told him he could get a GI online for $100 Canadian. I wasn’t intending to sell it or lend it out for a week lol. Shoot that’s weird,  especially when you know how much you perspire while training BJJ and the idea that it would be well taken care of made it easy to say no, I’ll just take it home.

I bought that puppy brand new for $104.00 USD, with shipping and handling at $25.00 USD & taxes $16.77 USD … that being said, totaled $145.77 USD.

The exchange rate not even sure back then… the bill on my paypay indicated 145.77 USD. However, currently…

exchange 1

$206.86 Can lol…

They GI I plan on selling doesn’t exist anymore at $150 CN… but these are very similar prices.

Redstar

soooo… $119 + $25 Shipping + $18.72 tax = $162.72 USD

exchange 2

$230.91 Can lol

That being said my original offer of $150CN was legit… he got a deal. My white belt however… guess he didn’t want the hassle of buying one online… I wasn’t going to sell it to him, but when he said $200 for both… 

#deal

I was gonna give my kid that white belt… but for 50 bucks, I can buy 10 of them lol.

#everyonehasaprice

One of my homies said I was a ruthless business person… I think it was pretty realistic that my original price of $150 CN was more then fair lol…

The logic and numbers don’t lie…

Truth is when you talk about a fair price, its always dependent on what the consumer market has the ability to spare. If they can afford it, they will pay for it. People don’t buy Rolex’s because they are dependable… they buy them because they can lol. However, unfortunately price can also be a delusion of dependability, and hold a high standard. 

If they can’t afford it, and still want to pay for it, you offer them a solution… which I did. The belt could be bought online for $10 bucks and I even explained that he could find a Gi online for $100.

BJJ related ranting gibberish over…

#over

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Ossssss!!

 

Jan 24/16 Sun Morning BJJ

I did managed to head out to Friday open Mat on Jan 22/16… didn’t roll. Just helped J-rock out with some questions. #Injuries can’t be like that forever… rest rest rest lol. Actually promised the wife I would not roll. She let me out of the house to hang out which was nice. Sitting at home after work from sitting all day at the office sucks especially when you got the bug for BJJ…

Either way Sunday was an awesome morning… got to LEMMA around 9:05 am.

Opened up the door and boom… the air hit my face yes hot air… lovely, actually wasn’t too bad once I got in the door. Not as bad as the past few times, obviously perceptively it may change lol.

You bet got on the rower at 9:20 am.

2 sets of 2 km, then 1 set of 4 km.

2, 2 km and a 4 km… kept it under 2:30 at least!! 11 am BJJ soon!!

A photo posted by T-son Inthisone D (@bjjfourlife) on

Average was below 2:30 mins per 500 m which was good enough for me lol. I’m showing up… Not bad for an old man who’s training irregularly now due to injuries and life lol. 90 percent of success is just showing up.

Clip of some box jumping after the row session… 3 sets of 10 reps. 30 inch box jumps? Think my ankle is better, felt better so I thought I would get some box jumping in… Not even sure of the actual box height, but the highest for the boxes we got around.

Got some good advice from Veal about some technique to improve the jump. Used it… and it works, got more explosion for sure!!

lol boredom gets you video taping workouts… plus its good for media content for a blog. Just irritable and long to edit though lol.

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A clip of all our training below… fun fun lol

We have a 49 year old dude that trains with us and shows up pretty regularly, when hes not working… I commend him. He just got his Blue Belt last year, seriously respect. A lot of time on the mat for that!

BJJ can be tough, especially when you get bitten by the bug and you have other life obligations like the wife, kids, work, or other hobbies you end up putting on the shelf lol yes other hobbies.

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Can we define life in just one thing we do?

Is the yearning to live defined by scope like attempts by being choked out by your training partner or while competing?

Training BJJ is highly commendable. Very commendable. Takes patience, extreme awareness of emotional intelligence and a freaking long time to just learn… you might think your getting good at one thing, then whoop, bam… your not lol. Soo much time on the mat to end up re-evaluating your skills after a horrible roll session or competition, yep wiped out. When your knocked down, do you not get back up?

Think this is kinda the essence of life. It ain’t perfect. Things get in the way. Do you quit? do you move forward? or are you just content on your current well being? There is a lot of sports or hobbies that could give you this same sensation. Especially combat sports like MMA, Muay Thai, Boxing in general? any fighting really… longevity, life expectancy, incurring long term physical damage another story. Obviously we’re talking about competitive training… not the excercising and physical workouts required to complete the acts, like boxercising or that kickboxercising dance stuff, like man. 

Your not a Muay Thai, Boxer, or even a Karate fighter unless you actually spar or fight with someone… or are you?

You train in a combat art for killing by which you don’t actually train against a resisting opponent? how effective would that be in real life which such a variant of circumstances? kinda what Gracie University was doing for a while with guys submitting video logged of technique to attain a belt on non resistant opponents. Right?

lol a Blue Belt without ever training with a resisting opponent… excellent ideals… washing out BJJ for a bunch of money. Consumerism and capitalism at its greatest. Sure they learn BJJ, sure they learn some kinda self-defense. But really do they? I get this may be helping BJJ grow, which in the end is great… but is it really? Look what happened to Karate. Sell the belt, make Karate a product, make it grow… Karate is an effective art. Just washed out… everyone one has a black belt, 2 years for a 13 year to get a black belt? Dfck lol… seriously… washing out the actual meaning of Black Belt. 

Karate!!
Found this karate rash guard for my buddy… hahahah

Karate rash guard

For Muay Thai the life expectancy of a fighter is what 30 years old in Thailand? not even sure… fighters live for the fight, live the living, and die training to support themselves.

Great blog below.

Here’s a good forum discussing of the life expectancy below.

Here’s a good article for life of a Muay Thai fighter below.

Reality is if you get out alive, there is long term damage from getting hit in the head repeatedly lol… Boxing I would imagine is another lol.

“Over time, professional and amateur boxers can suffer permanent brain damage. The force of a professional boxer’s fist is equivalent to being hit with a 13-pound bowling ball traveling 20 miles per hour, or about 52 times the force of gravity.
According to the Journal of Combative Sport, from January of 1960 to August of 2011, there were 488 boxing-related deaths. The journal attributes 66 percent of these deaths to head, brain or neck injuries; one was attributed to a skull fracture.
There are boxers with minimal involvement and those that are so severely affected that they require institutional care. There are some boxers with varying degrees of speech difficulty, stiffness, unsteadiness, memory loss and inappropriate behavior. In several studies, 15-40 percent of ex-boxers have been found to have symptoms of chronic brain injury. Most of these boxers have mild symptoms. Recent studies have shown that most professional boxers (even those without symptoms) have some degree of brain damage.” Verbatim from the article I read below,

Crazy!! no? Seriously though, what kind of damage is sustainable damage to the head? These articles below speak for themselves.

Interesting article about the load a boxer can produce when punching someone in the face. Pretty remarkable.

Can you actually really train these kind of combat sports effectively, competitively to not sustain this kind of actual damage? I’m sure you can make those decisions on your own… lets get punch drunk!! Either way scary like the above article indicates. I commend all those that fight for a living, its a hard knock tough life, which the path is ridiculously hard.

#respect

Either way I read somewhere that Rickson Gracie got involved with his nephews shenanigans and now they are revamping their logic… gotta roll guys lol, not rocket science or what, at least physics, applied physics? Money ain’t everything.
#Fantastic
lol

BJJ compared to the rest of these combat sports is definitely the gentle art within the combat realms in comparison.

I choose BJJ, continue to train BJJ. I can go 150% with willing partners or just compete and not sustain the long term damage to my head as compared to a competitive striker of any other Martial Art… unless I get need or accidentally punched in the face, hopefully not ever loose an eye from eye gouging.

#knockonwood

Not mocking it, whatever floats your boat and gets you off the couch… I used to make fun of the wife for her Zumba. Reality was, I didn’t mind, as long as it made her happy and feeling good.

She doesn’t need to know that… making her think that I think that I am the man… reverse psychology lol. hah!

My satrire somewhere up there? lol

#gibberish
#BJJfourlife
#BJJ4life

#endrant

Eitherway, regardless of my gibberish… continue to do what you like doing. Its just my gibberish.
Osssss!!

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Jan 13/16 Wed BJJ

Got to LEMMA around 5:30 pm Wednesday last week.

Yes I’m still behind.

Sorry… I start these things then either the 2 little monkeys wants my attention.

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lol. Yes the dog, fur baby and my actual human baby lol.

#furbabiesneedlovetoo

Got OTM with Thor for only a few minutes left lol.

Either way, Thor ran the class… warm up consisted of us working on shrimping on the spot, then exercises to warm up the neck. Wrestling styled stuff.

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Uuuuhh my neck was sore the next morning lol.

Not to mention my wrist… dfck.

I partnered with Josh for the tech review. We worked on the arm bar with the pit stop first… Rep those out like a few hundred times. We then reviewed the switch when your opponent rips out the arm… to switch to the far side arm when they attempt to pass your guard, which should be obvious, repping it out a few hundred times.

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OR NOT hahahah?

Forget my tape and neoprene reinforcement for my ankle and wrist…

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No dice on rolling fck… seriously fck!

Probably smart of me due to my injuries anyway.

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Really though… my wrist is busted up.

I shouldn’t be rolling anyway.

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Must have subconsciously been doing myself a favor. No rolling till your hundo!!

 

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Jan 10/16 Sun Morning BJJ

Got to LEMMA around 9:00 am this past Sunday…

Boy did I ever feel great… coffee, tones of H2O.

Weird though, a fellow by the name of Keith came in shortly after I turned on the lights. He mentioned his shifts got switched around and that his only available time to train was at 9 am… great, I replied…

I believe he mentioned that he was a paramedic? which makes sense, random shifts and hours. I told him I’m in every Sunday at 9 am should always be open… so see you here again.

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You bet… I hit the rowing machine.

4 sets of 2km.

Ouch… my 1st 2km set was the best. Slowly, very slowly improving lol Stretching then BJJ soon!!! Ossss

A photo posted by T-son Inthisone D (@bjjfourlife) on

Got some stretching and a few other things done before all the homies started showing up.

Boy did a few people show up!

Astonishing on how many homies we got… the mat was full.

A lot of new faces and a visiting face from Kenora…

#whitebeltarmy

Its slowly growing!!

All you guys and gals gotta do is show up!

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Oss!

Warm-up was standard, a bunch of partner drills, then the positional sweep drilling.

We reviewed a knee push sweep I ripped off of Emily Kwok and Stephen Kesting… one of my top 2 favourite online black belt resources. Differentiation of hers with mine starting from closed guard, then transitioning to the seated guard and then the knee push.

Cute fast clip of us doing our thing below…

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Jan 7/16 6:00 pm BJJ

#caughtup

Thank god for days off… wait.

No you gotta force yourself to take days off.

Seriously, all part of the training… or else injuries occur.

Regularly in fact…

Days off are gooooood.

Obviously I’m a hypocrit… lol seriously we train BJJ. We train a lot.

Who needs a day off?

On my days off from work… guess what I’m doing?

Putting time OTM lol

My obsession will become your addiction… hahahahah

BJJ is easy right?? Duh lol

Anywho lol Yesterday after getting home Baba was fed, as fast as I could lol… this time no coffee when I got home. Just water and some chicken with the monkey.

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Busy at the office yesterday and today BTW lol… worked on our company website fun fun… getting good at this stuff. Using my Digital and Marketing capabilities I picked up after spending 4 years at Lakehead University to get my HBcomm.

Hard to believe I didn’t shift into this specific line of work. Nuts… even though I love this shit. Ironically enough the Civil Engineering Technologist Diploma side of my education has been keeping me ridiculously busy. Both have their benefits. All I can say is the transferable skills developed from my Business degree have been a facet for other developments within my Engineering career.

Management, best Business practice’s etc… ironic lol… one of the University Engineering graduates asked me what I was planning to do with my Business Degree while only being a technologist and College Diploma in Civil Engineering. I replied that the reality is, an Engineering Firm is a Business, what better way to be able to work for one, is by understanding how it actually functions.

Twisted eh?

Trying to find some kind of rationale to analogize between work and BJJ lol…

#gibberish

My gibberish ahahahah … kinda like my BJJ belongs to me and no one else. A personal self expression OTM

Understanding the core techniques and the real function of the movement, which are built of tiny movements of once we were initially taught, to what we know now, for example a closed guard arm-bar… to me now, its just move. However, it has mechanics to get from one position to the next, as a white belt you need these mechanics, a base line, a reference point, or even how to punch or jab. The crawl before you walk shapeel… lol

  1. Start with your partner inside your guard
  2. Cross your feet to close your guard
  3. When you close your guard, lift your hips up, off the ground
  4. Break your partners posture by pulling your knees to your chest
  5. Pick an arm (ie, right arm) and grab the tricep (GI) with your same corresponding hand (ie my right hand to grab his right tricep (Gi).
  6. Make sure the elbow is crossed over the center-line of the body, the further the better, with maintenance of the broken posture
  7. Your partner should feel really uncomfortable at this point if the elbow is pulled over far enough
  8. With your left hand grab his left shoulder
  9. Open your guard, keeping knees pinched, bringing your left leg over the right should with the other stopping slightly under the outside shoulder
  10. Cross your feet again, you should be in a what we call a “Pit stop,” from here the arm could be attacked, in a more advanced point of view it and can be finished, fulcrum, hips high elbow joint is with a dangerous location
  11. However we’re gonna put my left foot on right hip, making sure that my right knee is right next to his left shoulder and that I’m still pinching my knees
  12. Slide your right leg further up his back, behind their shoulder to when where your right heel will meet his left shoulder (clamping down so you don’t give him space)
  13. Let go of their left shoulder with my left hand
  14. Swing your left leg over his head to the point where the crook behind my knee is about even to his ear. Make sure this is a smooth transition with no space and constant contact with them while doing this, the clamp down on both legs, I pinch my knees and look into their ear. your calves should be flexed and point upwards
  15. Then you lock his wrist (so their thumb is pointing to the ceiling) and lift your hips upward.
  16. At this point you can switch grips and under hook the right leg to sweep or finish the submission with them on their side.

Yeah a lot of steps eh?

The technique discussed is what we worked on before rolling… yep.

A lot of actual steps that I take for granted…

Anywho..Thor ran the class… fun stuff. Warm-up, some take-down styled drilling. The closed guard arm-bar with a pit stop. then rolling…. man sooooo many peeps OTM dfck lol.

About 90% green…

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Nuts, fantastic though…

Fresh meat for the bluebelts lol hahahah

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Either way great stuff!!

I partnered with Big Rig. Nice seeing him out from his break from back injuries. Yep sooo many injuries. Including myself. But hey, just show up and you’ll learn something!!

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Nice clip of all the newer and currents homies that showed up Wednesday night below… even caught the boxing class after in action crazy!!!

It’s gotta be a new year’s resolution thing… prove me wrong and don’t thin out in a few months…

Ossssss

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Jan 3/16 Sun Morning BJJ

Great class…

Sunday morning BJJ big up on the attendance!

Osss!!

It was awesome to get in nice and early… got to LEMMA around 9:00 am, chugged a pot of coffee. Even brought a few cups.

I was kinda was burnt out from all the wonderful scotch I had been indulging in lol.

#justdoit

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Taking a small break from the mat is crazy… gets you anxious.

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Weird like rolling is an obsession?

Either way got in and the temperature was phenomenal…

#phenomenal

Yes I did managed to row… results below.

Surprised at all the faces that showed up this morning.

Thought that everyone would be trying to recover from all the festivities… I was fortunately mistaken. Our regulars are warriors!!

Hey hey… what a better way then by sweating it out OTM!

Detoxification if all the evil food and alcohol consumed from the holidays… relieve that built up stress from sitting in front of the television all day.

Glad i showed up… looked like the others were somewhat glad as well lol.

#H2O

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Got the guys to follow me through a standard warm-up. Running around the mats, bear crawls, lunges, forward/reverse/side rolls, forward/reverse shrimping, forward/reverse break falls with technical stands, forward/reverse butt scoots, partner butter fly scoots, & finally following your partners legs with leg hooks. We then worked on the isolated sweep drills, then we reviewed my favourite sweep, the lasso sweep. Afterwards, we then rolled.

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Guys are getting it… slowly but surely, the regulars!

Homies got a lot of drilling in… hip bump sweep, scissor sweep, flower sweep, hook sweep, tomahawk sweep, star sweep, then the pendulum sweep. 2 min sets, then they switched. Lol

I partnered with Katrina for the drilling until I jammed my wrist again damn…

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Yep! I forgot to tape it.

Dumb dumb…

Rolled with Gary, Hector, Justin, and Hector…

5 min rounds and 30 sec breaks. Clip below…

Even worked on my head stand lol before one of the guys showed up…

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Dec 31/15 NYE BJJ

Yeah buddy…

Never too late to try… just do it!!

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NYE roll with my little buddy!!

Obviously I’m a few days late…

Oh well… get it done right?

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Dec 28/15 Mon Morning BJJ

Boom digity… got to LEMMA around 8:45 am.

Solid!

Only few more days to blab about!

Damn it was cold lol… on Monday morning man.

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BRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!

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Got a solid 15 min warm-up in… enough to take off my rash guard and socks lol.

A clip of our rounds… pretty random rounds cause we doubled up even though it was set at 5 mins lol…

A clip of the whole morning session…

Either way this morning session was fantastic!

Just show up homie!

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Always a great way to start out the morning… train BJJ and get your mind going!!

Osss!

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Dec 27/15 Sunday Morning BJJ

Still behind… but gaining ground.

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Got to LEMMA around 9:00 am last Sunday, you bet lol… I got some rowing in.

Seeing that I only row about once a week nowadays.

Down to once a week and before Sunday morning BJJ. At least I'm hear and killed my first sets average lol. BJJ soon!! Osss

A photo posted by T-son Inthisone D (@bjjfourlife) on

Oh well. lol

Class was fantastic!!

We started with a nice little warm-up, some drilling with isolated sweeps from closed guard, reviewed the star sweep, then a bunch of 5 min rounds of rolling.

Great crew out. We had a visiting brown belt from Complete MMA in Regina, Paul, who joined in on our morning training session. Was great to have the opportunity to roll with him, fun fun! Pretty fast on his feet and a very good top control game!

Been practising these head stand things to improve my balance and strengthen my neck… lol

Got a clip of me showing the star sweep from closed guard to all the homies that attended the class…

Clip of the whole class and us rolling from last Sundays BJJ morning session…

Overall great class a lot of tough rounds…

Wrist, toe, and ankle is still mangled.

Thank god for Tiger Balm and tape lots of tape. lol…

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Still waiting for the Battle Balm, can’t wait.

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