This past week in rolling and BJJ training was decent neither pathetic nor glorious. On Monday, I began the session drilling out a guard pass series of the kickback pass, lawnchair upon on the knee slice failure, leg spread across to knee slice, wrecking ball pass and wrecking ball pass to leg drag. As class started my usual Monday instructor Andre was not present and Joel strolled in to cover his class. His topic was the basic judo hip throw and Uchi-mata. My basic judo hip throw technique will require a lot of time and effort but my uchi-mata is not bad and my overall impression is that it is a slick technique as the video shows.

 Tuesday was the wrestling session and it was an enlightening experience to say the least. Beforehand, I had the slight chance to drill out arm drags and a turtle attack from cyborg Abreu. Jimmy, my adept and experienced wrestling coach, introduced a strong method and set-up for the ankle pick. The effective and direct technique involved snapping the opponent's head down with the club grip and then picking out the ankle. If failure occurs by way of the opponent moving the leg back then you move to attack the single leg.

 Thursday entailed a no-gi session whereupon the illustrious up and coming MMA fighter Nick instructed us on a basic knee slice followed by hip switch guard pass. The technique was very cool and interesting and followed along the lines of one of my new hero's: Mario Sperry.

 Friday was open mat at Barum's and the experience entailed getting beat up by numerous black belts while simultaneously providing enlightening and inspirational elements. First, I was able to finally begin landing and setting up my umoplata techniques and my armbars felt slightly stronger. My strengthened armbars can be surmised as I am essentially just conducting an imitation of my instructor and rolling partner Joel's armbar techniques.  Second, my knee slice became much more formidable when I extended arm across my opponent's body as I let my knee glide past his guard. I have discovered that this new format of performing the knee slice requires an allocation of confidence as I actually let go of my opponent and just let my body flow like water.