Holy smokes people, summer is officially here! I have been busy as hell lately, but things are going well. I have moved into a new roll at The Foundry. Our black belt Jon Lamarche now has a new work schedule and he has asked me to fill in and help teach when he can’t be there. Let me first say, this is an honor. I’m very pleased that my instructor has enough faith in me to leave the class in my hands. How it works now is he makes a schedule with a plan of what needs to be shown and taught during specific classes and then I see to it that everyone understands the material.

This does however mean that there are fewer classes where someone is actually teaching and instructing me. This part makes me depressed because I have this fear that my Jiu Jitsu may stagnate and that I will not progress as rapidly as I should. On the other hand though I have noticed that in preparing to teach classes its helped me tune some areas of my technique that I don’t normally use every class. So in that respect I see some growth in my game. How do you feel about this? Does teaching tighten up your game? Or does stepping up into a teaching roll tend to bring your game down? I would love to hear everyone’s view on this.

Oh by the way, Ferdum subbed Fedor last night. JIU JITSUUUU!

Here are a video of me rolling recently as well. I have the black Gi top on. Enjoy.