This month has been fairly busy at FJJA with class sizes being great, lots of promotions, and a few events over the past few weekends!

To start, our M-W-F-S classes have focused on stand-up techniques over the past 2 weeks, so we’ve taught a wide variety of things. A few highlight moves we taught in this unit:

Arm drags, Russian tie, duck under, and 2-on-1 wrestling options
Throw and trip options from Russian tie and similar grips
Guard pulls against various grips and quick pulls into fast sweep options

Over the past 2 weekends we have also had some birthday open mat rolls! We do these occasionally for events or in this case, for someone’s birthday, but they usually consist of a predetermined amount of time that we try to roll for without stopping. One weekend was for Timothy’s 25th birthday (so we trained 25 straight minutes) and the next weekend was for Ben’s 41st (so we trained 41 straight minutes)!

These rolls are not only fun and a great way to get a lot of rounds in, but I believe I have learned a lot (and continue to learn) from these rolls. Training for extended periods of time teaches us how to conserve energy, how to use efficiency, and ultimately how to survive for longer! I believe they are also great ways for us to let go of our egos while training. You won’t feel strong throughout, you will get tapped a bunch (and that’s okay), but you learn to continue and keep moving forward!

Happy Birthday Timmy and Ben! 🎉🎂

-Professor Tyler Beckley