January 23rd - Gi

Greg taught class yesterday and the theme was techniques starting with a cross collar choke from mount.  We did a pretty good warm-up with some jogging and up and down the floor shrimping and rolling.  I used to have a really hard time with the front shrimp but now it's become something that I excel at and one of my favorite things to do.

I worked with Fuji for the majority of the class.  We started out doing the cross collar choke.  We practiced one of several versions of this choke.  For this one it was palm up and deep into the neck and the other hand is the same on the other side of the neck going under the first hand.  Usually when I've done this it's one hand deep and one hand on the collar.  From their we worked on things to do if they defended like an armbar if they tried to hip escape or moving into the z-mount.

For open mat I rolled with David for about 15 minutes.  I felt like I was doing better than usual, but it could have been that David was working on something specific to improve his game.  From the start he allowed me to get side control and then worked on escaping.  I tried several things from knee on belly to putting him on his side to get a kimura.  Which allowed him to get to his knees.  I'm still not completely sure what I should be doing when this happens.  I was in side control for a while and eventually got half guard and then guard.  I was working hard to keep my guard and then butterfly guard.  Somehow I was able to get his back for a little while.  He did a very good job of keeping my arms in his arm pits and I was unsuccessful in doing anything from there.  He mounted me for a while and after I defended as best I could he eventually locked up my arm and put me into the gift wrap allowing him to take my back.  This position sucks as David likes to do the body triangle.  I was almost able to get out at one time but he sucked me back in and made me tap with a face/neck crank.

Mike showed me a standing guard pass that he likes to use and we worked on that for a couple reps.  I liked it except it was a little complicated.  It involved grabbing the pants and pushing them to the side and then switching the grips again and a little push pull.  I'll have to have him go over it with me again.

Greg asked me if he could work some techniques on me.  They were mostly from reverse de la rivas and pretty interesting.  As a trade off he gave me some pointers on the guard pass that he taught us a while ago. It's where one arm is straight and holding together both lapels and the other hand is on the pants.  Then after breaking the guard, come over their leg with the knee and post the other leg then underhook their far arm and the other arm goes behind their head to escape to side control.  I did about 10 or so reps of that.  Two things that were pointed out to me was that my weight was too far forward and I need to sit back and when I go to move my knee into their butt that I need to hold pressure down on them with my straight arm.  I'm going to follow Greg's advice and practice this 5 times or so before or after each class.  Maybe until I use it a couple of times during rolling without having to think about the parts of it.