DadandZachonRecumbents.com

I missed last Thursday because I was exhausted and everything felt dark to me. IDK how else to describe it. I needed sleep and when I woke up the next day the darkness was pretty much gone. My eyes literally felt dark and I felt tired physically. What I did that week was I was treadmilling HIIT(high intensity interval training) a day before BJJ. This was too much exercise for me obviously, and I am still feeling it in my legs this week. 

I have been drinking coffee and caffeine all day. I have a body issue where I get excessively sleepy during the day (literally called excessive daytime sleepiness). I lose focus if I don’t take medicine and I don’t wake up early enough in the morning. My days are very short if I don’t take care of it.

I plan on actually driving to the class today in my truck with my mom as passenger. She has helped me so much with getting to class. I have been driving every day for about an hour and I plan to drive every time she and I go somewhere. As an aside, I work at home and had fallen out of driving myself places. The end goal is that I drive myself to 4 places a week, Monday – Jiu Jitsu class, Thursday- guitar lessons then Jiu Jitsu class, Friday- Drum lessons. The hardest one is actually guitar lessons. I need to drive through the city to get there and it can be hectic. Also, after BJJ I am really exhausted usually, so it might be hard to drive back home unless I give myself time to recover in the parking lot. I have been driving to these places slowly with mom in the car, and it is taking me months, but I am seeing progress.

I finished a vlog upload for Dad and Zach on Recumbents, today. One of the video files must have been corrupt because the software kept freezing when trying to export on that exact spot in the process.

I finally practiced singing, guitar and drums all in one day. I did pre-calc, Python practice, also. This is important because my goal is to do these topics for at least 15 minutes a day. I do the math for maybe an hour and I put more time into each topic if I feel like it. But I have been tired from exercise and I just get lazy. 

Math and Python are for space science. I am interested in doing hobby astronomy and maybe going to school for it one day , so I need Calculus 1,2,3 according to google, and python for programming with any collected data. Usually, people would learn these in school, but I am 37 years old and have a background that allows me to just learn them on my own. Local community college is about 20k for an associate in science degree and I would need to transfer credits to a school with an astronomy or space science program. I don’t plan on moving anywhere to do school. Maybe online school is an option, but the cost is too high for me. That is why I plan to do science as a hobby for now.

Today, I hope we do more ground work and less standing up exercises. My knees are sore. I am still going (unless I get sick or injured before or during class). I hope Charlie is there today, I was told a car ran into him. I probably did 8-9 classes with Charlie as my partner. In the grand scheme of things, that is really a drop in the ocean for the number of classes. I plan on doing Jiu Jitsu the rest of my life if I can possibly do it, and it takes hundreds and thousands of classes to get really good. It still feels bad to hear somebody you know gets hit by a car.

I made a document that has all of my class lessons so far, and the moves we learned in them from various teachers in Jiu Jitsu. It is a more condensed document so I can go over the steps. I want to then make a flow chart so I can easily remember the moves from each position. I learned this from a youtuber. You draw a circle for each position connected with lines (there are some main positions) then you have ways to get to the other positions drawn as smaller circles connected to the main circles. The flow chart gets more granular the more that you learn and more circles appear in each main position, allowing you to do more things and remember them faster. This method seems overpowered , but I do not know enough things yet to make a comprehensive flow chart. I will try to make one soon and post it on here after I review how it is made on the youtube channel (I will link the channel so the person gets credit).

7/27/2026 Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Class 23

Teacher: Alli

Partner: Don

Today we started by working with the top person in half guard and a hook around our head and under our arm. 

1. Bump them up and off a bit and frame with left and right hand on their neck and bicep
2. Put the left or right knee on their chest
3. Push them back and get the trapped foot out and on their hip
4. Get closed guard or push them away and do other things

We added on to the half guard escape

1. You do the same frame and knee
2. You shoot through and put your ear on their belly
3. Grab the leg at the same time as 2
4. Push their hips forward to offset them

There was a butterfly hook idea

1. You get the frame with hands
2. You put a foot into their thigh(butterfly hook) from the opposite side of your frame
3. Use the butterfly hook to do things (I didn’t practice this unfortunately I am not flexible)

Don and I rolled at the end 60%. Don got side control the first time(we were practicing lightly so we just stopped). Then we did a closed guard, me on bottom. I tried to do a triangle choke but I couldn’t pull his arms and head down to get it. He broke free and got side control. Then I did top and he closed-guard. He tried to triangle choke me but I eventually got my hands on his armpits and stood up and spun out of the legs around me. It was a very intense 60%. We were fighting hand /arm control for most of our rolls. A few times he would almost get away and I would regain closed legs control. We did one more at the end and I ended up just pressuring all my weight on his chest and going for a kimura from which he instantly tapped before I could figure out the kimura. I think he tapped from the pressure rather than the arm.

I had a good conversation with Kenny today about coming in even when you are injured and need to sit out of class and just watch. I asked him if it feels weird just watching the class, and he agreed that it does. He said although it might feel weird, it helps you keep your relations and routine is the important part we talked about. Kenny is dealing with several injuries currently and he communicates that to his teammates and they try to not injure him. He said to me that even though everybody wants to destroy you when they roll, nobody in our gym wants to really injure you. Thanks for the advice Kenny!

Note: I did drive to class today, a huge victory for the longevity of my Jiu Jitsu lifespan.