No gi? No problem...not so much.

Training this week has been going really well. I've been feeling better and stronger every day. I took yesterday and today off work, and spent most of today sleeping -- totally necessary.

I usually skip Thursday nights at the academy or do Thai boxing instead of BJJ because it is no gi night. I have two basic objections to no gi. First, there is nothing to grab and that makes no sense to me. Second, it supremely grosses me out to have to grab onto someone else's sweaty limb. However, given that I seem to have temporarily lost my sanity and registered for a tournament that is just over a month away, I decided I need all the training I can get. On top of it, the worst part of my game is my stand up -- I often feel like I lose my matches in the first 30 seconds because the stand up game goes so terribly wrong. I need to get past that in order to be competitive at all. I've known it for a long time and have decided to deal with it head on.

It wasn't so bad. I managed take downs during drilling, and starting from standing for sparring for the first time since the vertigo took over my life...so not so bad. The whole thing still just makes no sense to me. It's so weird. My closed guard game has no impact because most if it is chokes with grips and so...what exactly do I do from closed guard now? Ugh. I'll figure it out eventually. Train train train. A black belt is just a white belt who never gave up, right?