Shrimpin' Ain't Easy

Last week was a return to basics. For most of the week we spent the majority of the time on hip movement. Explosive shrimping up and down the mats, one-legged shrimping, top leg only shrimping, bottom leg only shrimping, shrimping with hip elevation at the end, etc., etc.

It was eye opening to me to realize how lackadaisical my hip movement had become. Small technical movements are fine but sometimes you need to move your backside from point A to point B with a certain amount of enthusiasm. After regular classes and some extra mat time I think my body is in a permanent curve and weekend barbecues make me strangely nervous :-).

All that shrimping was combined with some frame and grip basics to escape from side control and other "life sucks" positions as well as preventing the pass. The beauty of all this hip movement reeducation was it's immediate and almost universal applicability when rolling.

When I think about how much I got schooled this last week on something as simple as shrimping it makes me wonder if I will ever get a grip on this jiu jitsu thing and then I remember this quote from Roger Gracie ~ "Jiu jitsu is simple, you just gotta do it right." So I guess I'll keep trying to do it a little more "right" everyday.