April 16th - Gi (Don't Let Go)

David started out with a warm up and then handed the class over to Greg.  We started from closed guard and moving into a cross sleeve grip and underhook on their leg.  From their we did an omoplata and a few armlocks.  We also worked on completing the omoplata and flattening them out. Adam was my partner throughout.

We trained king of the mat from the closed guard.  We split it into two weight classes this time and I ended up on the large side of the class (190+ lbs) of course.  Will and I had an epic battle where I kept him in my guard for probably five minutes doing a lot of various things from playing really high to spider guard to the cross guard that we worked on.  Eventually I got an omoplata and swept him over.  Fuji passed me pretty easily next.  Later on I almost passed Adam with the pass that I've been working on but I guess I didn't pin him because he kept a hold of my pant leg and eventually sucked me back in and side mounted me. 

I later went up against Greg and he put me in the cross guard this turned out very difficult to deal with.  I went as far as to ask him how to defend it because we worked on counters to the obvious defense of grabbing the far leg, what I ended up somewhat having success with was trying to get the knee of the cross armed side onto his leg.  In the end he swept me with the omoplata, I rolled and ended up in bottom half guard losing. 

I finished off the drill with Mike we ended up in donkey guard off the mat at first.  We reset and started over and I made the mistake of being too squared up while trying to bull fight and he swept me.  Mike is quickly becoming my new nemesis. 

Most people left during open mat, in fact Ken and I were the only two to stay.  Fuji and Mike stayed but just sat on the bench talking about how cool it is to be bouncers.  Ken and I started rolling, I was in my gi still and he had switched to a t-shirt.  I don't remember how it all went down exactly, I believe I was in open guard or butterfly.  He inadvertently stuck his head out there and I was able to put it into a guillotine choke.  I was able to clasp my hands and although I had an arm in I knew it was tight.  However, Ken was not just going to give in and tap.  He got out from my legs so I pulled him into half guard.  We rolled over and I held on I heard him gag a bit.  I got to my knees and then fell back and pulled him into half guard again.  During this whole time I was thinking if he's not going to tap out for me I'm going to choke him out, I wasn't going to let go.  He finally tapped!  The first thing he said after that was that "Now he had to look forward to reading it on my blog."  That's right, and David, watch out cause you're next.

Ken and I rolled again I got his back right away but I wasn't able to complete the choke.  He eventually escaped and he dominated for the remainder of the role.  I was able to get to deep half but didn't know what to do from there.  Fuji and Mike were yelling at me to roll back and forth but I couldn't move him at all.  Eventually Ken submitted me with an americana.  Later Mike showed me what he was talking about from deep half and I understand it a little better now.