September 12th Gi Class (Spiderweb)

Finally had a chance to learn a little bit about the Spider Guard Monday. I've been interested in it ever since I first rolled with Greg.  It's a cool position that can only be done with the gi from an open guard you kind of shrimp out to where you have a hold of their sleeves and your feet on their biceps.

We started with just a basic way to get to the position and worked up from their to a sweep.  While Greg seemed concerned that we would think it was boring, it was not the case for me.  I love to drill and drill the basics of stuff and get it down.  I was partners with Rob for most of the class. I like his attitude and his willingness to keep drilling stuff.

A major part of this position like many is hip movement and timing.  By the end of class my fingertips and forearms were very sore from holding on to sleeves.  At the end we learned a very cool sweep that I think I got pretty well but I had to really concentrate and think about all of the steps.  To finish up we did two minute drills with one person trying to pass and the other person trying get and maintain spider guard.  I had no success here against Rob and Mike.

During open mat I rolled with David and tested my new side control defense.  It worked better than usual.  I could tell that he was trying to go north/south a couple times and I was able to stop it.  I felt like I was in a little more relaxed position from the bottom.  Now I just have to work on getting out of there more.  He tapped me out twice one from taking my back and kind of a crossface neck crank and the other from north/south choke/neck crank (so my defense wasn't absolute).  

Next I rolled with Ken.  It had been a while and it actually turned out to be pretty fun.  I was able to get spider guard.  I was able to maintain it for a while, but I couldn't make a sweep happen.  Then also was able to do the x-guard sweep.  I'm sure it's because he's kind of going with the flow and not trying his hardest to submit me as soon as possible.  He did eventually submit me with like an americana or something like that.

Me, Ken, Mike and Jared ended up hanging out for a while after class and discussed stuff like doing more repetitions and how our school compares to bjj classes elsewhere.  A very thought provoking discussion.  We also talked about lunch time JJ class.  I wish I could do something like that but the logistics just aren't there.