Mat Survival

Well, that was quite a roll last night.

At Jitsu class, as usual we spent an hour working on a technique, and then do open mat rolling where you can work on that technique, or can just  roll freestyle.  

Rolls had a timer of 5 minutes on them this time, and after that you find a new partner and go roll again.

So, for my second roll of the evening I got paired up with Chris.

Chris happens to be the same belt level as me, but he's 20 years younger than me, a head taller than me, and he is heavily into physical fitness. He also doesn't go less than full effort in all of his rolls.

In short, rolling with him is like rolling with a Mack Truck. 

Great practice for in real life, as you're unlikely to be physically attacked by someone weaker and smaller than you (mind you this session wasn't street-level realistic as it wasn't a fight sim class with punches - adding punches and havign to defend against them, especially facing him, really raises the level of suckage). 

In short this was rolling with the roll mode set to hard.

But this time around, he was unable to get a submission on me.  To be fair, I sure as heck couldn't get a submission on him, though I made a few attempts that got close and grabbed his attention at the right times. But, I was able to successfully shut down and survive each and every one of his attacks which was very happy making.

By the end of the 5 minutes we were both pretty much drained, as defending against him for 5 minutes was sure as heck exhausting for me, and he had to bring a lot of energy to the party to try and get me which was exhausting for him. 

But it was one helluva good roll, and a sign that I'm improving a bit in my technique, which is nice.