July 2nd - Gi

I know I wasn't going to mention how hot it was anymore this summer, but damn.  I had weighed myself yesterday at the gym and was at 195 when I weighed myself this morning I was at my goal of 190, but I think it was just water weight that I was missing.

The theme of the class was techniques from knee on belly.  We started with the baseball bat choke but from the top side mount position instead of guard.  Fuji gave me some good pointers on how to make the choke work if I couldn't get the first grip deep by using the other hand to pull the collar across the back of their neck and make it tighter.  It's a simple things that just hadn't occurred to me.  We were also doing it with the breadcutter motion and pushing the elbow across the chest which helped with getting the legs around to north/south which was a previous problem for me.  We rotated around and worked on some various other techniques from knee on belly (Armbar, reverse armbar, and a back take).

We did the 8 round position drill ladder with Mike as my partner.  I defended first which turned out to be a good choice.  It was really rough, I haven't felt like quitting during drilling that much in a long time.  I'm amazed at how easily Mike can recapture guard or go inverted and get his legs in the way when he needs to.
For open mat, as if I wasn't beat down enough, I rolled with Adam.  My claim to fame for this match was that I reached deep half and swept him and then pulled off the over/under pass.  After all of that hard work I wasn't able to hold him down.  From there on out besides a few times of me regaining half guard I was smashed by cross-faces in side control and north south.  There was a brief moment where I thought I might tap from exhaustion but I talked myself out of it and kept defending.  It was a losing battle and I eventually was submitted by kimura.

After laying on the mat for a while in agony, I noticed Carlos was without a training partner so I decided to don a rashguard and go another round.  It was a repeat performance of Sunday except he seemed to have the upper hand for most of the battle.  He threatened kimura quite a bit whenever I would go to deep half.  He also almost had me in a triangle choke but I was able to posture through it and I tried the knee escape that we learned from Greg last week.  I think I picked the wrong knee though.  I had him in a north/south choke but it wasn't complete because he kept me in half guard and I couldn't get my leg free to finish the choke.  At the end I had regained guard and was exhausted and I asked if he wanted to call it a day and he agreed.  Not sure how tired he was.