This morning I woke up feeling like I had my ass kicked by a Brazilian guy. Then I remembered… I DID have my ass kicked by a Brazilian guy!

I went to my first class last night at Memphis Judo & Jiu-Jitsu. After about an hour of warmup and instruction in some basic moves, we spent the remainder of class practicing on each other. I started with one of the instructors. Not knowing much in the way of offense, I just did my best to keep him from making me tap… hopefully I was a little tougher than most of the newbies he’d come across, but I still found out the hard way (several times) that aside from a forearm, you can be choked with parts of your own body as well as by another person’s leg. He let me beat him a couple of times, which was nice for technique practice.
After going up against him a few times, I switched off to the only other girl in the class. She was really nice, and very patient considering how many times I’d accidentally yanked her hair trying to practice a guard change earlier. I was able to put her in the one move that I’d been practicing most of the night- a keylock.

It was a lot of fun. I definitely want to continue going to class, but I’m not sure when since the racing season is so close. For one thing, the classes are later at night (over at 10:00), and I typically go to bed about that time. Also, I can’t risk injury with my first races quickly approaching. It will probably end up being a fun exercise in cross training in the fall. Until then, I’ll keep the ass-kicking contained to the bike.