December 12th - Gi (A Matter of Time)

David taught class last night and the theme was the guillotine.  David does a pretty good job making the warm up difficult and we do a lot of different drills.  I especially like the 5 Judo 5 Wrestling takedowns as a part of the warm-up.

I've decided that I hate having the guillotine practiced on me.  My neck and adam's apple were very worn out at the end of the class. We did most of this from Guard or sprawl position.  We finished the class with the 8 minute drill.  I had Brian as a partner.  He is tough to deal with when back mount is concerned.  With his long limbs I have a hard time maintaining hooks and hand fighting.  When I was back mounted he crushed my insides with a body triangle.  Otherwise we were both pretty even for the most part.

For open mat I rolled with Ken first.  We had a war with me on top for most of the beginning.  I took his back, had side control, gift wrap.  There was a moment that I felt close and got that feeling that I was going to get a sub.  I just couldn't finish.  Like usual I eventually gassed and Ken got on top and he was able to get me into an Americana.  We talked about how he hip escapes from side mount and I kind of like it.  I'm going to try it out when the situation arises.

I went with David next and was still a little tired from Ken.  My main goal was to try to misdirect and not use much strength against David.  I felt like I was doing a good job and I actually had a little bit of confidence.  There were a couple of times when I worked from half guard and was able to do my thing to get on my side and guard from his arm.  I regained half guard and at one point was able to get to my knees and get topside using the guillotine that we just worked on.  However the stupidest thing happened to me when David locked up both of my arms with overhooks and had me with a double armbar.  I verbally tapped probably too soon, but I'm not interested in getting hurt with something like this that I can't tap from.  I believe in our second match David took my back from turtle and choked me out.  Later on we discussed what to do with double underhooks on the legs and I think my roll to turtle was good, I just need to get out of turtle more quickly.  It's only a matter of time before I submit David.