December 19th - Gi

Greg taught class last night and the theme was setting up a triangle and some armbar stuff.  A lot of this had to do with covering the opponent's arm with your shin kind of like the top part of a scissor sweep.  Then kind of rotating and pulling them into the triangle.  The hardest part for me was bridging my hips up to get a better position for the triangle.  It's a difficult technique to lock up for someone with short stocky legs.  We really didn't work on that many techniques, but it was good quality time with a lot of reps.  Ken was my partner throughout.

Greg had us do a couple of partner drills.  A couple of times we just rolled for 5 minutes with our partner then other drills were escaping/maintaining trying to submit from mount.  I went with the other Josh and Spencer a guy that just started back up after an injury.  I outweigh both guys by quite a bit, and they both tried to use their speed to their advantage.  My main goal was to use technique and not rely on my weight so much, so I went to half or full guard and tried sweeps and stuff.  Felt pretty good for the most part.

I also went with Ken for mount escapes.  He is very very difficult to hold in mount.  He always has some way of making space with me.  It's so frustrating!  I finished the partner drills rolling with Fujitsu.  We had a little back and forth and I felt like I did a little better than I used to do against him, we both had good positions and reversals but no one got submitted.

I only rolled with Ken for open mat and the frustration continued.  His guard is so hard to pass and there is always a leg or foot in the way.  I was getting noticeably frustrated by this.  Greg was watching us and gave me some pointers as I did things wrong.  I was able to take Ken's back once.  I eventually gave up an americana, due to attrition.