January 19th - Gi (Stupid Triangle)

Ray taught class yesterday and it was a pretty awesome class.  My gripe about not drilling enough was answered.  We started off with some animal walking and other calisthenics.  With a partner we did sweeps, throws, and wrestling takedowns.

For the rest of the class we did several position drills just trying to escape, sweep or improve.  We did mount, guard, open guard, butterfly, half, sprawl position, and maybe a few others I've forgotten.  We kept up a pretty good pace.

During open mat I went with Brad, who I haven't rolled with in a while.  I was kind of hoping that enough time had passed that I would blow him away but that wasn't really the case.  I did well for the most part but in our first match I made the mistake of getting sucked into his triangle.  He did a really good job of holding my sleeves and pulling me into position while wrapping his legs around my head and shoulders.  I hung on for a while but had to eventually tap.

During our second roll I was able to take top position off the bat and kept him in side control for a while.  He wasn't really guarding the north-south choke so I took special care to control his head and not let him turn in and I slunk down into position pushing forward on his shoulder.  His chin was digging into my ribs a little bit but I felt like I still had it locked up pretty well and I steadily applied pressure until he tapped.

We went a third time for a tie breaker and I thought I was doing well.  I had him in the reverse arm triangle for a while but eventually lost it trying to make it tighter.  Later on I was doing the basic guard pass with my shin across his leg and I kind of got stopped.  Instead of continuing to go forward I thought it would be more clever for me to go around his leg to the other side of his body.  Big mistake as this freed his other leg and I was put in his stupid triangle again.  We hung out there for a long time and soon everyone was congregated around us telling us both what to do to submit/defend the triangle.  My sore neck tells me that I probably should have tapped sooner because I eventually had enough and tapped.  So, I'll be working triangle defenses as soon as possible.