December 8th - Gi (de la Riva is hard)

Conan taught a small class yesterday and our focus was the de la Riva guard.  This is pretty much where your opponent is standing and you wrap their close leg with yours and while grabbing their ankle you put your other foot on their hip.  We worked on a sweep from their and then worked on reverse de la Riva kind of switching the position of the feet and grabbing the ankle with the other hand.

I had a really tough time with this.  Probably mostly because long legged Brian was my partner.  It was a lot to think about and I had trouble getting my legs and hips in the right place along with controlling my partner's sleeve.   I'm glad we only did a couple of different techniques.

During open mat I went with Adam first.  He pretty much had his way with me trying submission after submission and not allowing me to get out of his side mount.  I got to my knees a couple of times but wasn't really able to improve.  I was able to keep him from submitting me for quite sometime but it was very frustrating not being able to get out. 

I went with Brian next.  I tried for an armbar right away from kneeling.  Then he used his long legs and tried an armbar on me I was able to bend my arm and keep it from getting pulled in.  I got side control after that and started working for an Americana.  I thought I had it and it seemed too easy.  It was, out of no where a leg circled my head and kind of triangled me.  Really it seemed quite impossible from where I was and I was kind of embarrassed that I said "holly shit" rather loadly.  I was able to eventually get out of it luckily.  I tried several submissions  from there which took a while.  I eventually was able to get a darce and using the advice from the other day I just kept shoving my arm in there.  Once I was able to reach my bicep I fell to my side and that was all she wrote.

We went a second time and I was able to get top position again.  I had him in a north/south on his side and was trying to do the kimura.  Ray coached me to get my foot under his armpit (which I didn't know about) and then try to triangle my legs and sit on his head.  I felt like he was giving me the kimura so instead of sitting down all of the way I tried to pull his arm out (using too much strength).  I should have listened to Ray and tightened up my legs more. I eventually had to abandon the kimura and switched to an armbar.  Unfortunately I didn't have him locked down good enough and he was able to situp and put me into side mount.  We quit after that.