I rolled with Cobrinha!

Just after New Years, my brother told me that they were going to be baptizing my new niece in Atlanta, I checked my schedule and was excited that there was finally an out of town family event that I could attend! It wasn't until later that I realized I'm going to be in Atlanta, I HAVE to stop into Alliance while I'm there. Then this week I thought, hey why not get a private lesson while I'm there too. So being super awesome Cobrinha agreed to do a private lesson with me with about two days notice!

I went online and watched a few of his videos again to help me decide what I wanted to work on and called Ryan in Japan to ask him his opinion of what I should be asking Cobrinha to help me fix with my game. I was more interested in his open guard sweep game, but Ryan thought I needed more work on defeating the spider guard and guard passing, so that's what I asked about - and HOLY GOD was it amazing! It's so crazy how many really tiny details there are to everything he does.

His lessons aren't cheap but at the same time it was totally worth every penny. I was a little late arriving because of a delayed fight (oddly enough not due to snow) but he was super gracious and didn't seem to mind. I was planning to jump into their nogi class but after starting late Cobrinha (once again being super awesome) went almost 30 minutes over lesson time! I guess Brazilian time can work in your favor too, lol!

It's been eye opening for me to see how all the really top level guys (and girls) adapt similar concepts all over their games while maintaining different styles. And until Ryan's coaching started to incorporate some of the same things this year, I'd never been subjected to anything quite like it before. I could certainly be wrong, but after working with a number of different Brazilians this year, I wonder why most Americans seem to be very much behind the Brazilians in their approach to jiu-jitsu.

Anyway, the lesson was amazing. It was so cool how he could control his every movement so that it felt exactly as if I was rolling with someone my size and strength. He was willing to drill the same technique over and over and over until I could repeat it as flawlessly as possible for having just learned it. Then we drilled with light resistance so he could see how I switched between the techniques as it was required by his movement. He was constantly adjusting what seemed like minute details the entire time.

And finally we rolled, and rolled, and rolled. He even let me choke him once despite him releasing hold after hold after hold if he felt like I was executing the proper escape. I was prepared for him to smash me and instead it felt like I was rolling with a slightly more technical version of myself (how does he do that?) as he fed me specific techniques as I attempted to re-create what I learned during the lesson.

Can't wait to hear from Ryan how he did today in Japan!