Study Group, 9/14/09

I haven't really talked about it on the blog here, because I didn't know how it was going to work out, but for a while now, I've been talking with folks at my church about us doing a judo/BJJ study group using the church's facilities.

There was lots of discussion, since we didn't want to expose the church to any liability in case someone got injured, but at long last, it's been approved. This is a pretty cool development, because the church has a large room with an already padded floor in the children's' building (not as soft as real mats, but it'll do for grappling). The room is huge, and it's a lot different than trying to roll on my little 8x12 mat space while trying not to bump into furniture.

We had our first church study group on Monday, September 14 2009. I was very clear to all of them that I'm no qualified teacher, and we were just going to play with some of the stuff I've been shown and have a good time.

5 people were there, including me. It was me and one of my nephews (who's been practicing with me at my home study group), a guy with some previous judo experience, a guy with Gracie Combatives experience (through his training in the Army National Guard), and a guy with no grappling experience, but previous karate experience.

After light stretching and warm up, we went over the following:

• Trap and Roll escape from mount, standard version, headlock variation, and punch block variation (from the Gracie Combatives DVDs)
• Americana armlock, standard version and headlock variation (also from the Gracie Combatives DVDs)
• Scissor sweep and hip bump sweep (from Roy Dean's Blue Belt Requirements DVDs)
• Rolling (at around 50% intensity) for the last 10-15 minutes.

The entire session was an hour and a half. I think the guys had a good time, and they seemed to be having some success with most of the material. We're planning on making this a regular Monday night event, so I'll post a training log after each one.