February 8th - Morning Open (Secret Move)

Like usual, we had a good training session this morning.  I started out practicing some spider guard with AJ.  I didn't let him know that I wanted to drill and it turned into a sparring match after a while.  The cool thing was that I almost got one of the sweeps that we worked on Monday.  I at least got him off balance and put him on his face for a little bit.  But, he quickly learned not to let me put my knees in and get to the spider guard position.  We ended up rolling normally and he put me in sprawl position quite a few times.  I'd sit-out or regain guard and then I'd end up there again.  Eventually I got the upper hand by getting a single leg and taking side mount.  For the rest of the time I worked from knee on belly and then attempting the north-south choke when he got my knee off.  I tried a few times to get the baseball bat choke, but I think he was hip to it.  He mentioned that he felt like I was tiring him out which was allowing him to make stupid mistakes.  Not soon after that he allowed me to get hold of both sides of his collar.  I put my knee over his bicep and was able to move into the choke and it worked!

Erik showed up and him and I had quite a roll.  I spent the majority of it on the bottom in half guard.  I didn't feel like I was in too much danger except a couple times when he attempted the darce.  I attempted kimuras, the shaolin sweep, and guillotines but his strength did very well against me.  I spent some time in closed guard as well and was able to sweep him with kind of a pendulum sweep up in his armpit.  I hung on to the top position for dear life even when he pushed me way off I was able to squirm back.  I had him in gift wrap for a little while and attempted to pull him into back mount but he wouldn't go.  I could tell he was getting a little winded and I was able to make him tap on my second attempt at an americana.

The rest of the time was spent drilling.  I drilled the straight arm guard pass and the reverse de la rivas shin sweep with Erik.  Then Greg practiced some spider guard sweeps on me.  He seemed to have an aha moment and figured out a variation on a sweep that he wasn't that confident in before. 

I then practiced something that I will dub as my secret move until a later date.  The problem with this blog is that people that I train with read it.  And when I say I'm getting good at a certain submission or that I'm going to try to use it when I roll with somebody like David or Fuji tells me that they read my blog and is already ready for me to try my newest move.  But I don't know that they know.  So they'll laugh at me when I attempt it and say, you shouldn't have wrote that in your blog. 

So I'm going to conduct an experiment and see if I can practice my secret move and keep it secret until I've drilled it enough that I can use it while rolling.  Then I'll report back if it worked or not.  Now I have to figure out how to drill it without letting on.

On another note, I'm on the lookout for a new Gi.  Let me know if you have any suggestions.  I'm mostly concerned with getting the right size.  Those charts just aren't made with me in mind.