January 8th - No-Gi

None of the regular instructors showed up yesterday but we still had a relatively big class.  Luckily the Kobudo guys were there so the door was open.  Adam had us do some wrestling drills which were good.  I always want to improve on those.

For the remainder of the class we worked some reverse de la rivas with the help of Mike's expertise.  Bauer and I helped the new guy (can't remember his name) with some regular guard passes and stuff until Will showed up and then I worked with him on the stuff everyone else was working on.

For open mat I went with Will first.  I think I did pretty well, at least he hadn't submitted me before he had to go.  He did dominate the majority of the time though.  I regained guard a couple of times and got to my knees from side mount.

I went with Adam next and I think I surprised him when I used one of my legs to pull his other leg out.  Can't remember the technical term but I basically used half guard to sit back up and pull his leg out straight.  I guess I almost got him into an unintentional knee bar.  We quit to discuss the shaolin sweep and never finished our roll.  So I'll count not getting submitted twice as two wins in my book.

I saw the new guy was just watching so I asked him if he wanted to roll.  Like most people that walk into the Dojo he's had previous martial arts experience.  He said he did Korean Karate back in Pennsylvania and they did some ground grappling.  He definitely knew what the positions were and where he didn't want to be.  He also used a lot of strength in trying to fend me off and it was working to an extent.  I had to try a little harder than I thought I would to pass and to get him on his back.  He liked to do a lot of forearm to the neck as well which made my throat hurt last night.  I was eventually able to get around him into side control and started locking up a darce until he tapped.  We went a second time and instead of pulling guard I put him in a wristlock and got side control.  Much more preferable for me.  He had both arms way low inviting me to put on the North-South which I've been having the most perceived success with lately.

I went with Ken next but it didn't turn out to be one of our epic battles.  He set me up in an armbar that I couldn't weasel out of.  I don't really remember too much else.

Unfortunately David won't be able to open the Dojo up on Wednesday mornings for a while.  I don't know of anyone else with a key that wants to come that early.  I'll have to replace it with swimming or find someone to do Hapkido with me or roll at the Taekwondo school.