Welcome to Rocha Jiu Jitsu

So I signed up at Rocha Jiu Jitsu on Monday after checking out the place last Thursday, and was immediately greeted with:

Oof.

Basically, you skip rope while your partner does 5 Turkish Getups on each side. Every time the rope hits your feet, drop and do 10 pushups, then 10 mountain-climbers. This went on for probably about 20 minutes.

Then Eduardo taught us a few half-guard passes from a position I’ve never seen before, where you post your hand by their head, turn to face them, kind of sit up on their hips (while thrusting your hips forward) and then walking your trapped leg forwards. After walking it forwards for a bit, just push on their knee to loosen the pressure a bit, and when they try to reconstitute half guard, kick your shin across their hip/thigh and get the knee out. (Alternately, if they try and get the butterfly hook in, push their knee back and slip your leg forward when they kick.) It’s neat stuff, but it’s stuff I’ve never seen before and it felt a little bit unnatural. I’ll keep trying it, though.

It feels good to be rolling again after a ~2 week long hiatus, and it’s been fun getting used to training with new people. This is the ninth time I’ve started at a new place, so I think I’m fairly used to the switching by now, but it’s always kind of disorienting to get used to my spot in the pecking order at one gym and then realize at a new place that there is a whole new group of people that can whoop my ass. From the looks of it, the guys at RJJ are up at the top in the Bay Area – plenty of competitive success, a strong competitive team, and if Monday was any indication, they don’t fuck around with their conditioning. Plus, practically everyone is bigger than the guys at Alive Academy, which is something I’ve been needing for a while.

It’s good to be back.

pat m.