Tuesday, June 19, 2012

June 18th - Gi

From this post going forward I'll stop mentioning how fracken hot it is and how I end up with a soaked gi after each class.  How I already feel warmed up and get a good sweat going just by getting dressed for class.  But I'm not going to talk about any of that.

Jerad taught class with inspiration by a baseball bat choke video that Mike linked to on Facebook.  I appreciated the class since I've only done this technique a handful of times.  After learning the basics of the technique we did some variations setting it up with a failed scissor sweep to get them on our side.  Part of the trickiness of this technique is that you end up in a bad place positionally to make the choke work.  So, you can kind of lull your opponent into thinking they're passing your guard and then sink in the choke.

After that we pretty much opened it up and did 3 minute tournament style matches starting from standing.  I think the only person I didn't roll with was Bryan.  Some of the highlights were:

I weathered the storm of Fuji for a while and prevented some takedowns until we fell.  From there I gained half guard once but I was crushed for the rest of the time. 

I rolled with a new guy who is a fellow former Marine.  He was stronger and a little more knowledgeable than I thought he'd be.  In the end I was able to take his back but it was a harder fight than I thought it should be.

I kept David at bay in my guard with an overhook for the majority of the match.  He did get takedown points when I went for a guillotine.  Just when we were starting to work into something else the timer went off. 

Mike (blue belt)  and I had our normal battle of me trying to pass his guard and him not letting me.  There were a couple of times where he had me off balance and there were a couple of times where I should have taken more advantage of him going inverted. 

With Mike (white belt) and Garrett I wanted to focus on my takedowns and it was a little more awkward than I would have liked.  I really need to find a comfortable standup game for myself.  I feel like I know a lot of techniques and throws but don't know the best ways to set them up.  It may be a little bit paralysis by analysis too.

I rolled with Jerad after class and right away I attempted the baseball bat choke.  Which I think he was surprised by because he said he didn't know whether to be mad or proud.  I didn't complete the choke and we had a pretty good battle.  My game has evolved a little bit now where I'm doing more than half guard and I'm going to deep and sometimes working for back mount or a single leg or x-guard.  He ended up getting me with a collar choke from behind and an Ezekiel later.  However, my shining moment of the day was in our second match when we agreed that ankle locks were legal.  I was trying to keep my feet safe through our entire roll and I defended a knee bar.  I saw my opportunity to go for a foot and I sunk in a toe hold and at the same time tried to keep my feet out of his reach and got the tap.

Oh and by the way it was fricken hot.

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