April 22nd - No Gi

Conan taught class yesterday with the theme of the single leg takedown at my request.  There were only six of us and I ended up on the senior side.  We went over a single leg and took each other down.  I'm starting to feel some confidence in my technique.  All of the important things I told and showed one of the new guys yesterday from keep their head up and on the correct side to make sure that they step the correct way and pull the opponent's leg between their legs and finally push with their head.  From there we did the single leg from a couple of ground positions with the opponent in combat base or standing.  One of my favorites was when we held the opponent's wrist under his leg and took him down where he didn't have a base. 

We also did a little bit on pushing the head when someone is moving up into side control.  From there the approach of the guy on top is to do a head stand and put his feet and hips on the other side.  The principle is that you can't pin someone unless your head and your hips are on opposite sides of their body.  It's always fun to work on this but it got me to thinking about how often we go over a particular subject.  Then I started to think about how many classes I miss by not being able to make it on Tuesdays.  How many things have I not learned because I wasn't there at a particular class.  Of course classes aren't run in a vacuum and we often work on things multiple times in the same week or someone will drill something with me that they worked on the other day. 

I rolled with Claire a little bit during open mat.  I made her work on maintaining guard and escaping mount.  If I passed her guard I'd work for mount, once I was there I coached her through the escapes that we worked on as a warm-up.  Then once she was in guard I'd start all over again.  I also showed her the triangle setup from an overhook but we didn't work on it very much. 

I rolled with Adam for a while.  It didn't go too much different than usual.  He got me with a far side armbar with a nice setup.  He locked my elbow out on his shoulder before he switched to the other side.  This turned my body making it hard to defend the step over.  I rolled with him again and Conan coached me a little bit, the thing that helped the most was that he had me push him to his back while in butterfly guard, something that I hadn't thought to do or thought I could do.  He still ended up submitting me with an americana regardless.

Conan and Adam rolled for 10 minutes after that.  There was no clear victor however, Adam was able to escape side control twice with an underhook and rolling to his side and then to turtle.  This is what I have experienced from him before, it's like there's no stopping him from there.