I Used To Be An Adventurer Like You.

Then I took a knee in the face.

Which happened tonight at jitsu.

We were doing side mount sparring and wall drills.

A wall drill is a fiendishly clever workout.

As you might expect, there's a wall involved.

2 practitioners are on the mats, in this case lying down, the remaining practitioners are lined up. on, you guessed it, the wall.

How it works: 2 people on the wall take top of side mount on the 2 on the mats.  If the one on the bottom of side mount escapes they get to remain on the mat and the person on top heads back to the wall, and another person immediately comes off the wall to try and get them.  If the one on top gets a submission,  they take the place of the person lying down on the mat and the next person comes  off the wall tries to submit them. As soon as someone escapes or submits, someone comes off the wall to replace the person leaving. You keep going round and around until time is called.

It's fun, fast-paced, and it's a ridiculous amount of energy spent defending and attacking. It's a great way to hone techniques against a lot of resistance and different opponents as everyone wants to stay out on the mat and off the wall as long as possible.

I managed my personal best tonight - I submitted the opponent on a time when I came off the wall, and then fended off and escaped two other practitioners who were the trying to submit me.

That was happy-making.

Then I took a knee in the face.  

Not intentional, but in the scramble my opponent had his knee connect to my face and I managed to get a nice bloody lip and saw a few stars to boot. Ouch. 

I held on for a bit being nice and effectively defending, but noticed I was bleeding, which is a stopper in the action.  Got up, cleaned up and stopped the bleeding and got back at it after. Since then, I've had some ice on it and some lip balm, and we'll see how bad it looks tomorrow. No pain, no gain I guess.

Even with the bloody lip, it was still a good night and my techniques were on point, and it was nice to be the windshield rather than the fly for once.