Saturday, April 3, 2010

Cook Brothers Crew at New Breed

The alternate iteration of the CBC went to New Breed Academy in Skokie for an open mat today.

Ben is a purple belt now, two stripes, and he wanted to check out a local gym. Kevin is a brand new white belt, and for all intents and purposes, so am I.

We rolled for a couple hours. I felt surprisingly good, I went in thinking my long layoff from BJJ would get me pretty much wrecked in the gym. However, wrestling seems to never die. Though I constantly found myself in spots where I'd say, "I used to know what to do here", I only rarely got into trouble.

I got tapped a few times, no shame in that, mostly due to white belt mistakes I forgot I'm prone to. I tapped a few guys too, one by arm triangle, which I've never hit.

After each time I rolled with a kid, though, he'd ask me how much I weighed. Once I told them, "170", they'd usually seem surprised. One kid told me I felt like I weighed 300. I got a lot of compliments on my strength, which I put to use often to make up for my lack of BJJ skill. It's strange to suddenly be a "strong" kid in the gym. I've spent most of my wrestling/bjj time as a weak kid going on technique and heart.

But motherfucker this ain't back in the day. Shit done changed.


2 comments:

  1. Nothing like some time with the Charles Bronson Crew to hammer the last trace of subtlety out of you.

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