Danny Ives Seminar Day 1

I was so tired last night after the first day of the Danny Ives Seminar, hosted by the Cornell BJJ club. The club hosts about 2 seminars a semester. It is awesome because the school pays for the seminar, or at least most of it, I paid $10 this time. Anyway, Danny Ives is awesome. He comes in from Maryland. Here's a link to his website:

http://www.iveyleaguemma.com/

The seminar so really cool. We worked on a ton of positions, but they were related so it didn't seem overwhelming. We started off working on a basic armbar and then did a triangle and then worked the two of them together. It was a chain, I love doing chains. Person A attempts the armbar, person B pulls the arm out, then person A goes right into the triangle. I like that combo, I don't use it as much as I used to.

We also worked on 2 sweeps. OMG I need to work on my sweeps. I know everyone needs to work on everything but I think I might concentrate on my sweeps for a little while. Anyway, the sweeps he showed us were pretty sweet. One was from full guard and the other was from half-guard. I tend to get stuck in half-guard a lot so this portion was of particular interest to me.

We did about 3 variation that ended up with us doing a take down. I really suck at those. For some reason I don't use angles as well as I used to. When I first started training for MMA I think I used angles better than I do now but I was still doing capoeira at that time and I think that made a big difference.

I rolled with my buddy D and with Danny Ives last night. Geez I got so gassed when I was rolling with D. I don't know why I get so gassed when I go with him. He is a blue belt, I think he is very close to being purple, but I feel like when I roll with him I tend to get overly excited. I think its just because I think he is really good and I know he's going to pick up more on every mistake I make and that makes it more fun to roll with him but it also makes me feel like I have to work harder. I still haven't figured out how to work harder, where work harder doesn't mean use more muscles. LOL. I tend to try to muscle more when I'm rolling with him, I noticed last night.

I had a good amount of time to recover before I rolled with Danny Ives. It is so funny rolling with black belts because they aren't even close to being tired when you are done going with them for 10 min. I am excited for that day. Anyway, he was awesome to roll with, he opened up some good positions for me to get submissions. He would give me pointers at the perfect time, like when he could tell that I didn't know what the hell to do from a certain position. That's one of the main reasons I like rolling with advanced people, because they aren't going full blast trying to submit you, to the point where you aren't even learning anything. At the end of it I was tired as hell, thought I was going to vomit but overall happy with how the round went.

We are training from 12 to 3 today. I'm looking forward to it.