I am sorry that I have not posted in a long while!  The second day of class most of the guys were sick.  That then took me out of work and class for a week and a half.  When I was finally better and ready to go back to class it felt like I was starting all over again, but I still love going and have loads of fun.  I am now taking Jiu Jitsu classes on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and if there is an open mat on Sundays I will go to that too.

My first class was on January 20th, but since I got so sick and missed the rest of January I really count February as my first month of training.  Since then, I am starting to be able to keep up on warm-ups better. I can run with the class and not need a break. I can do hip escapes but anything requiring upper body strength is very hard for me to complete.  I also still have issues rolling from sitting along the back of my neck to back to sitting. I have practiced that but still find it so difficult.  While the scale is not changing my waist line has dropped about 6 inches.  I am hoping that my weight starts to follow, because my weight class sucks since there is no one else!

I have also made a bunch of new friends and found a whole world of other girls that train with Yamasaki.  The class that I started on Friday nights is in Gainesville VA, it is a bit of a drive for me but worth it.  It is a girls class instructed by Sal and Addie.  The class has about 7 girls that come and they are really nice and also really strong!  When practicing spider guard it was definitely difficult to break, and most of the girls are new and have only done this for 3 classes.  They are definitely good and I am glad I get to roll with them.

Now that I have met a lot of the Yamasaki instructors, my respect is even greater for the school.  They each have their own styles but they are all there to help us and make sure we do the best we can.  I definitely hope that one day I will be good enough to join their team!
Also, I did not know this (mainly because I do not watch UFC, I watch YouTube for female MMA fights) Mario Yamasaki is an amazing referee for the UFC.  I saw him and Fernando Yamasaki refereeing a UWC MMA event and they were by far the best refs I have seen.  They get down and know exactly what is going on and when a fighter is in danger.

Tags: bjj, brazilian jiu jitsu, christina, fitness, grappling, jiu jitsu, martial arts, mma, ufc, yamasaki

This entry was posted by Christina on Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 9:15 am and is filed under Learning a Martial Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.