Today was my first advanced class, and it was very enlightening to say the least. I now understand how all the three stripes were beating me consistently before: the advanced curriculum is just that, more advanced. We learned some great judo stand up take downs, which should be useful in a tournament setting because of the standing start. From there, we learned a really nasty side mount collar choke. Pics will come tomorrow if I have a neck full of bruises. Finally, we did positional training from the side mount and I, as expected, got bounced around the gym. I really need to improve my side mount game; hopefully I can address this during one of my private sessions soon. Post class, we rolled for 30 minutes then called it a day.
As for my overall progression, I have seen a significant improvement over the past 5 months and tonight sealed that for me. While I will obviously continue to improve (and thus my individual performance tonight is ultimately meaningless), my first time in a totally advanced class gave me a good benchmark as to where exactly I stand versus some of the best our school has to offer. I think I stack up well already, and this gives me quite a bit of motivation to train even harder so that I am able make strides within that group. I am starting to figure out how to use my strength alongside technique instead of in lieu of it, which is a significant change for me. Still a lot of work to be done, but I see signs of positive progress that weren't so readily apparent only few days earlier. Very excited to see what the future holds.
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