Staph, staph go away...

I love Hibiclens. It smells like a clean hotel room and helps sedate the germaphobe in me.

Tonight was...pretty rough. I left the mats feeling like an all around failure. I rolled with all higher belts, but my ego doesn't seem to want to take that into consideration.The warmup was long (Wuzzup mentioned it was hard on him, so I didn't feel completely out of shape). The technique we're reviewing is an underhook sweep from guard, and it's giving me grief.

We started it last week and I think I finally started picking up the basic action the last few times I tried it. Tonight we learned how to tie the failed sweep into a triangle or omoplata. BeginnersInstructor asked if I remembered how to finish the triangle and I replied "yep!". Of course I remembered triangle, it was one of the first techniques I learned! Well, apparently I only remembered it in theory, because once I got through the failed sweep, it was all upside-down and backwards. I'm having a really hard time balancing learning new techniques and retaining the finer points of old ones.

On the up side, I rolled with my first purple belt tonight. I didn't notice his belt color until we started rolling, and then a small jolt of fear ran through me. I was ready for a serious fight. But as soon as I started struggling, I noticed that he was very...soft...so I calmed down and tried to pay attention to what he was doing and ask a few questions. I'm starting to really appreciate higher belts that genuinely try to submit me. I want to build a really solid defense, and having someone really trying to catch me helps me find problem areas.

I feel like my one legged bridging is paying off, as I don't get pinned for long periods of time like I used to.

I'm going to spend some time studying escapes from the following holds, because I get caught in them a LOT.

1) Kesa Gatame
2) Reverse Kesa Gatame
3) Seated Mount-I've been attempting the escape from JiuJitsu University (pg 62) but just noticed that I've been staying on my back while trying to escape AND completely ignoring the choke defense.