July 4th - Morning Open

Had a good morning of rolling yesterday morning.  In attendance was myself, Adam, Claire, and James. 

Adam showed up first after a quick slow roll we got down to business.  I didn't feel as crushed as I did on Monday, I'm assuming not being exhausted and not having a gi on helped a little with that.  While my wrestling has been improving I'm no match for Adam especially since most of what I know about wrestling, I've learned from him.  Once he took me down, it seemed like butterfly guard is what we fought for the most.  We each try to get good foot positions and then go for arm drags or the butterfly sweep.  I don't remember being dominant too much, but I don't feel like he smashed me either.  I recall getting him in a reverse heel hook, but that might have been when we were just slow rolling because I think I would be a lot more excited about it had it been during a real match.

Like usual with Claire I usually take the fight to her in the beginning and then we'll work on a specific defense.  Something that just occurred to me is that she may need to work on submissions more.  While it seems like now she's focused on defending against these bigger guys that she will never have to face in a tournament.  I know I felt that way a few times in the beginning months, that whenever I'd get a dominating position I wouldn't know what to do from there because I spent so much time defending up until then.  I still do a lot of that now.  Maybe more of the dominant position drills will help her.

My rolls with James were very eventful.  I picked up on a few wrestling things that I want to add to my arsenal that he showed me.  One was a kind of an arm drag but with the hands reversed and then you tie them up in kind of an escort position.  One of the things that makes arm dragging slower for me is I'm always trying to grab with the correct hand on their wrist.  With this it's possible to grab with either hand with the same motion.  James submitted me 3 or more times.  Twice with a kimura (which shocked me) and once with rear naked choke which I'm always surprised at his skill once he has the back.  However, the last match went to me.  We were in the middle of a scramble when I took an opportunity to go for a leg lock and he defended it which put him on his back, I moved into side control and took the north/south choke.