June 24th - No Gi (Hide Your Ankles)

Conan taught class yesterday and when asked Ken suggested we work on head and arm triangle.  We started with transitioning from one side to the other in the side mount position.  We went over some of the finer points of the technique, then Ray showed us the Judo way.  We worked on talking on the phone and the grab the knee escape.  Like most techniques the best way to defend it is during the transition phase when and if there is any space allowed.

I rolled with Mike, Conan, Jordan, and Ray during open mat.  Mike's guard was as tough as usual and I was unable to pass with whatever I tried.  I spent most of the time trapping his leg between mine and trying for over/under.  I don't remember how it happened but I think I was defending an ankle lock and during the scramble I was able to grab the toe hold on Mike.  Pretty cool.

Conan was pretty dominating.  I believe I defended well for a while.  I tried to go to deep half a couple times but was stuffed and then cross faced repeatedly.  Most of the time he's pretty slow and methodical he'll try a couple of things but doesn't really commit to them and then bam he picks a submission and it's locked in.  This time I'm pretty sure I defended his bam technique that he thought he was going to get.  He did however get me not soon after with the bread cutter.

With Jordan my main goal was to get to deep half or x-guard.  I usually tried for x-guard first but it seemed like whenever I made some progress he would fall over before I could get the position, this of course worked in my favor but it's not what I had intended.  Not sure if I'm doing something wrong or if it's Jordan's inexperience at work.  Deep half worked just fine for me and during our match I asked if Ray would show me the ankle locks we went over from deep half.

After going over 4 or 5 of those locks Ray and I rolled with ankle locks being legal.  He tricked me from all over the place including some really odd positions.  I thought I was getting good at hiding my feet when working with Mike but Ray seemed to be able to pull off these locks from anywhere.  I did get deep half on him once and was able to sweep but that was the most of my success.  One of the most demoralizing locks Ray got me with was when he had my ankle locked between his calf and thigh in a kneeling position.  I couldn't move and he just pushed on my foot slightly with a toe hold.