September 29th - Gi Class (Glasses suck for Jiu-Jitsu)

I decided to finally make a trip to the eye doctor yesterday.  I had been experiencing some blurry vision on and off in my left eye and was getting concerned.  I have some scratches on my eye that will eventually heal.  This I took as relatively good news because I was afraid that I had cataracts or something permanent.  Still I had to get some very expensive eye drops to take for 5 days.  Plus I can't wear contacts until this is fixed.  Not that I want to, but it makes martial arts a lot easier when I don't have to worry about breaking my glasses or not being able to see when I have them off.

I wore my glasses for the majority of class.  Conan's theme for the class was working from guard by request of Matt.  We worked on trapping their arm and then going to kimura, then oma plata, and finally triangle.

For the Judo portion of class we worked on Soto Makakomi off of making them step.  Sensei Beggs talked about the triangle that you want to work with when throwing someone.  He used some sticks on the floor to make an x and show how when someone moves how the x moves.  This helped me visualize how to throw a little better I think.  I may have to think about it more.

During open mat I ended up only rolling with Matt.  It was a small enough class that we were able to start from our feet.  I was pretty much able to dominate and keep top position or back mount through our first two matches.  I got him into an anaconda choke in our first match.  In the second match he was doing a good job of keeping me from getting a good side mount position, so that has improved for him.  He did a lot of good hip escaping and shrimping.  I also found it difficult to go to mount on him.  However he eventually went to turtle position and using the seat belt grab I was able to pull him into back mount.  I got a bow and arrow choke from there, which was awesome. 

Our last roll I was able to get mount and eventually worked into a triangle.  I made a mistake though and was rolled to my back and he was able to posture.  I'm not sure what I should have done differently to lock up the triangle better.  Eventually he broke it open and he was able to put me in side control.  I was pretty tired at this point but I was able to squeak my leg around one of his and put him into guard.  I then surprised him with a well timed scissor sweep.  At this point everyone else from class was watching us and giving Matt pointers.  While I was in mount I went for a sloppy armbar and he was able to grab his hand.  During this time everyone was trying to tell Matt how to escape and I was trying several things to break his arms apart.  I tried the far side pull on the elbow and eventually got it with a figure four kind of kimura motion.

Afterwards I asked for some pointers on how to make that position better.  Apparently I wasn't squeezing my knees as much as I should have which would have helped considerably.  I think I might ask someone to work on breaking the armbar grab defense if I can make it to open mat today.