Training: Week 5

Just got in from Monday nights training; what a great session that was. I had a call during the day from the instructor to say that he was ill and unable to do the class, so he would have to cancel. I straight away told him that I would be happy to step in and take the class rather than several people turning up to an empty room. I was aware that I couldn’t teach any moves but I got to texting a few people to say, “why not just turn up and have a roll with each other.”

I had two or three texts back and so the class was on. When I arrived there were nine in total and everyone seemed to think the same as me, better to turn up and have a bit of light sparring than missing a whole session altogether.

So after about ten minutes of warming up each person did their own stretching exercises and then we all just paired up and started sparring. There are no real aggressive people in this club and everyone is more than happy to stop and teach the other person a move if they’ve not done it before. It was a really good atmosphere and within a few minutes people were breathing out of their rears. If they were too tired then they could just sit to one side and chat to someone else about certain moves and join back in when they were ready. Because there was no real structure to the lesson, people felt at ease and were able to take it steady if they wanted to.

We then decided to do a quick five minute roll or tap with each other. Each person fought one another twice, so at the end I had had sixteen fights and to my amazement didn’t lose one. Well chuffed. There was one guy there who I only knew as the Polish chap. What a strong bloke he was. He was the guy that to be honest, I had kind of avoided due to his strength and size. He could really hurt. Anyway there was no avoiding it tonight, everyone fought everyone. The first ended in less than a minute, when I let him get the mount in order to put my calve crush on him. I am now known in the club for this move and trust me, it really hurts, even the big guys. The second fight seemed to last for over five minutes, again I got him in the calve crush but then took it off quick and said let’s keep going. Another minute later and I had him in a rear naked choke hold, game over. He also is a really humble guy and shook my hand.

This was a great evening and people seemed to take allot away from it. I even had a couple of texts when I got home to thank me for the training session. I told the instructor that I would be happy to take them whenever he couldn’t, but I was aware that there were others he had that could actually teach the moves. Not only that but when I gave the instructor the money that I'd collected from the students for the session, he gave me a tenner for my trouble. Nice touch I thought.