Welcome, mat!

Mine, all mine!

Yes, I now have a home mat! I wasn't sure how many of the old mat sections we were going to be able to get, but Joe brought six of them home last night, so we doubled them up and we now have a thick 6'x9' mat, with the potential for twice that if we spread them all out. There's plenty of room to practice almost anything. It still seems like a dream, but then I look over and there's the mat! Hello mat, welcome to our humble home! It's even cooler that the mats came from the dojo, so now we have a piece of it here with us. To celebrate, the first thing I did on it was the first kata I ever learned (followed by several more). Then I laid on the mat like Vesuvius Man for about a half an hour, just enjoying the happy vibes.

Of course you can't have a home mat without christening it with a little Jiu-Jitsu, so last night I challenged Joe to a roll. I hadn't grappled with him since before I broke my wrist, and I must say, I have really improved since then. I used to not even be able to get top position on him, let alone hold it, but last night I was floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee! He did get me in back control a couple of times, but I got out pretty quickly, and all of his submission attempts failed. After about ten minutes I tapped him out with a straight armbar from scarf hold.  Woot!

We did roll off of the mat a little bit, and I kicked the computer stand, but for all intents and purposes I think our new mat will serve us just fine. A couple of times I really wanted to push off on the wall to get some leverage, but I figured that would be cheating. It's probably good practice for me to grapple in a tight place, because I'm so used to having tons of room, and less space definitely changes things up. I'm hoping that having a home mat is only going to increase my awesomeness!