Like many others before me, I thought I'd give a rundown of my nights events as tonight was the night that I lost my BJJ virginity.

Exhausted.

This is a good definition of how I'm feeling right now.

Don't get me wrong though, I feel great! I feel as though I accomplished something and that's exactly how I want to feel after every session. I honestly can't remember much that went on as it has now become a big ball of blurryness due to my nervous disposition but I shall attempt to give a short breakdown of what occurred.

We started by jogging, side stepping, doing push ups and crunches etc. The usual I guess. Then we learnt about how to move into a rear naked from a headlock type position from standing. This I assumed was more a self defence technique rather than actually being useful in a BJJ environment. Then came the good stuff. This basically involved starting in full guard on top and having to slide your head out of your opponents grasp, posture up and using your elbows and the Gi as leverage to force the closed guard open with the tip of the elbow. Surprisingly easy and very useful I'd imagine. We practiced this several times and swapped turns after a little while.

Next we would use the same technique to open up the closed guard but at this point my opponent would grab my sleeves and sit in butterfly guard. At this point I had to grab at the very bottom of the Gi and use this to pull my opponent toward me and trap his feet together and roll him to the side, then press my head against his chest and end up in side control. This one was a little trickier but I got the hang of it in the end.

And that was pretty much it. At the end we had 2 minutes to try and pass each others guard and see if we were able to sweep our opponent. I got my guard passed twice and was unable to pass my opponents guard but came very close so I am taking that as a slight plus. Considering he has been training for a while and was most certainly in better shape than I am. One thing I know for sure, despite having fairly good cardio, it means nothing on the mat.

I cannot wait to try my hand at it again and I would recommend it to anyone who is still unsure about going for the first time. The biggest hurdle really is walking through that door for the first time.

If anyone has any tips on how to improve cardio specifically for BJJ and anything that may help my game then that would be much appreciated! Also, apologies for the use of incorrect grammar or terminology - I need to get some sleep pronto.