Upcoming events at Fifty/50 and more

Last night about 15 or so ladies and gents from the team (I love being able to say LADIES) met up at Bailey's in Arlington for the UFC. I'm disappointed about Demian's match but there were a lot of good fights last night and Randy and Noguiera (sp?) definitely stole the show. Randy gets crazy props for stepping in there and giving it what he did at his age - he'd smash most of the guys out there today still, but Noguiera is a damn good all around fighter and clearly won all 3 rounds with more than one near submission and a couple close knockouts. I'm happy to see his old self show back up and I hope to see him get a couple more good fights before he turns it in.

Paul Schreiner will be back at Fifty/50 for a seminar this Monday night and I am so excited because I was deathly ill last time he was here after Worlds and I missed all the cool stuff he taught.

Then Val Worthington is coming out from Cali as well to teach a seminar on Sept 21! Yay for awesome female grapplers giving seminars!

AND we have 8 women training right now and are expecting maybe up to 3 more soon, some of who have trained before like one of the last ladies who joined. Woohoo!!!! (We need to ramp up our numbers because 2 of our ladies recently moved out of the area.) We hope to add a night class for the ladies soon. (Fingers crossed!)

Overworked and Undertrained

OMG I just realized that I haven't posted in almost a month!

I worked over 50 hours last week and almost 60 hrs this week (16 hrs just in one day). Especially this week, I've been so tired by the time I got home, the boys (Darren U was out from Cali helping Ryan train for ADCC) were lucky I cooked dinner, no way could I have physically trained (other than Monday before it got really bad at work).

Although I still feel drained, I am looking forward to teaching the women's class today and training some. Ugh my lungs are probably shot too - and they were just getting back into shape before shit hit the fan at work. Time to begin gearing up for GQ in Sept.

I forgot to give a wrap up of ADCC Northeast Regionals, I've been so busy. Well, I'm going to Nationals next year but only because no one my weight class (or the one above me) showed up. I had to jump up to Under 145lbs, giving up 30lbs. Then in the absolute my first fight was against a chick who's probably close to 160lbs. When I had her in an armbar, she stood, lifted me up above her waist and intentionally slammed me into the mat. Oops, forgot that was legal in ADCC.

Thanks to tons of breakfall practicing over the years, I kept my head from hitting the mat on the first hit (although it bounced after that, the damage had been mitigated). My arm/elbow seemed to take the brunt of it. I thought it might be broken at first it hurt so bad but turns out it was just mat burn so bad that two weeks later it still hasn't healed (but the monster bruise finally did) AND I was wearing a long sleeve rash guard. How do you get mat burn through a long sleeve rash guard and not from being dragged, but from an impact?

Anyway, I guess it worked out okay that I was so busy at work since my arm took so long to heal. The mat burn is still there but now I can put my elbow down on a surface without searing pain. It was very strange, I've had mat burn tons of times, but this last one was the worst. It was big around and must've cut deeper than it appeared.

New ladies are training at the gym now! All 3 that I hoped would sign up when I was writing my last post, did. Woohoo!!!

Off to grab some coffee now before the women's class today. =)

For you, Lateef!

This is for Lateef, who called me out for not writing in a while. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I have been very busy at work this week and have been actually training as well! Woohoo! Okay, so I am still a bit out of shape to be competing next weekend at ADCC Regionals but at least I'm better than when I went into the Sub Only. And after training almost every day for the last week, I am starting to feel a little sharper again.

These kids from Drysdale's are staying with us for the month and they are GOOD! Like seriously legitimately good. They're only 15 and they embarrassed grown adults last weekend at the Copa Nova. They are a good time to roll with and it's nice for some of the more advanced students to go with them (including me). The cool thing about kids is that they have endless energy and they go for broke during every roll...BUT they are super technical and relaxed at the same time. It's awesome.

Tuesday, James came and taught a wrestling seminar. It was great! But since I haven't wrestled in almost 2 weeks, I could already start to feel that I was losing a little of my aggressiveness and technique. The guys loved the seminar so we will probably try to bring him in about every other month or so if we can.

Wednesday was Anthony's class and it was fantastic as always. I was very happy that I was able to work with Brian because he is my favorite training partner! Today was regular nogi, Ryan showed a new take on the guillotine which was super hard for me and Quang (sp?) and a bunch of others to get at first. But once we understood it, it was killer.

Tomorrow I plan to go for a run and lift and stuff because class is canceled for the competition team try-outs. Ryan and Seph are going to make those guys hate themselves. I'm excited to see who makes it through!

Saturday we have the women's class and I am expecting three women to sign up! Then we have our first official Fifty/50 picnic at Andy Ruffner's beast house. Can't wait to party!!!