Day 5 & 6

If you didn’t realise (cos your probably not paying that much attention), I didnt post yesterday. This is primary because nothing of much interest happened; I had a bad nights sleep monday night due to a combination of the unreal heat in my room and the mat I was using as a bed (its not one of those nice soft mats you get from thousands of hours of being walked over, thrown onto and rolled on top of. It was one of those brand new mats, that are so dense it leads you to question whether you've stepped off the concrete floor onto the tatami yet) This left me to wake up yesterday morning with not only a extremely sore neck, but tired and in a pretty bad mood. Theres no nogi sessions on a tuesday (or thursday) so I was left not really knowing what to do with the day. I go downstairs and Rogers there. He tells me that were doing wrestling at 5 so be there, cool. Anyway I have a large portion of the day to kill, so I go for a walk. I walk up to times square (about 15 min walk from the academy) to look around. Its a crazy place. Huge sky scrapers everywhere, massive billboards and tonnes of people. The area in and around times square reminds me a lot of central London, on steroids (as most things in the states seem to be). I get back and Roger has to take Renzo back to the airport but the others would be here apparently. I wait around a bit and no one shows, oh well. I go to grab some food and when I come back do a bit of weights but its hard to motivate myself to lift in such heat and with no one to lift with (Im used to training in Mill Hill with a group of guys, listening to 80’s power ballads running around, shouting and lifting shit. Hard to stand in a gym by yourself and move iron once your used to that). Anyway I have a very short work out, buy a blow up bed, steal the fan from the changing rooms and get to bed. Another early start tomorrow.

I wake up at 7, class starts at 7.30/8. One big plus about living in the gym is all I have to do is walk downstairs and im at training. I have some nuts and Jack3d again for breakfast (need to sort that shit out) and head downstairs. Bigger turnout than monday morning. Probably 30 guys on the mat. Mr Danaher was taking the class again. We started standing, with a front headlock to ankle grab and then snap down from single arm thai clinch to ankle grab. Nice takedowns. We move onto what to do when the opponents stands in guard; One from if he stands in a narrow base (lock around the knees and sweep to the side) and one from a wide base (ankle grab and take him backward, simple stuff but with some nice details). He then taught a very nice open guard movement drill, De La Riva guard to heel hook position/guard (don't know the name) to both shins on the thighs and ready to double ankle sweep. Nice drill. We then do sparring. 4 6 min rounds, I roll with a couple of very tough guys, both brown belts. one was around my weight, about 5 foot and a solid ball of muscle. The other guy was huge, probably 95kg. Hard rolls, I feel a lot more tired than I usually do. Think its to do with the god damn heat (maybe lack of food). I must note one interesting thing about John. He calls all the moves by their original (japanese) name. Including stuff like arm bars, I found this very interesting, it also meant I didnt know what he was talking about half the time hahaha.

I have until 7.30 for the next nogi class (about 10 hours) so I decided to go for a walk back down and around times square. I spend most the day in cafes and restaurants stealing their wifi. Pretty much how I made my way from the academy to times square; get a ice tea in pret a manger, spend and hour or so on the net there. Walk a few blocks. Get a smoothie in Starbucks, hour there. Lunch in a sushi place, hour there. I got up to times square and decided to find a place I could both cool off (very hot here) and kill some time; cinema, perfect. So I find a cinema in times square, and ive never seen anything like it. From the outside (and even the lobby) it seems like a normal, standard sized cinema. Except it had 5 floors!!! And not 5 stories, 5 FLOORS each floor was about 2-3 stories from floor to ceiling. The place was huge. The screen was also probably the largest movie screen ive ever seen (see what I said about yanks and stuff on steroids). Anyway, needless to say I went to watch (make that re-watch) The Rise of the Planet of the Apes (awesome film!!!). Also it inspires me, in the same way a lot of people find Rocky inspiring.

Then its back to starbucks for a bit more wifi. Then back to the academy for 7.30 nogi class. The class was quite, between 10-15 people. It was being taken by the guy who's apartment I stole over the weekend, his name was Max. Max was a brown belt and physically a beast. Around my height, maybe a bit taller, 90kg, shredded, the look of a wrestler. He taught some nice double legs and single leg switches. One of the biggest things ive noticed here is the number of stand up grappling techniques (wrestling) taught in every class. Its without a doubt the weakest area of my game, so its nice to learn some takedowns and I hope to get into wrestling more in the future, especially as I will look to move more into MMA soon. On the ground we do a nice last ditch effort sweep from when the guy is passing the half guard and then a knee bar from on top of half guard, which is very useful as there is very little movement from the set up to the finish, making it sneaky, I like sneaky.

Then came sparring. My first roll was with Kay, a brown belt girl, very strong and extremely tough, she toughed out a lot of chokes that a lot of guys would of tapped to. I then rolled with Max. He was extremely strong and explosive and we had a very good roll. He couldn’t pass my guard and I couldn’t sweep or submitted him, but we both had a great time trying. The small class meant that it wasn’t as humid/hot/sweaty as the other classes i’ve done, which I can assure you was greatly appreciated. I then rolled with 3 or 4 more guys. Blues and purples. Maybe a bit to do with the heat (or lack of), but for the first time out here I was finally starting to roll like myself. A good session. Now to pick up some food. Steal the fan back from downstairs and sleep.

Ape Out.