September 8th - No Gi (What a Drag)

Jerad taught class yesterday with a focus on the armdrag.  This has been very useful for me lately especially against people that have no experience with it.  It's so easy to take the back.  With Jiu-Jitsu a little bit of knowledge over your opponent can go a long way.  I think back to when I first started learning it and I believe I thought it was either too hard or not for me.  I think Adam solidified the importance of learning this technique for me since it's such a huge part of wrestling and he uses it from standing to set up wrestling moves like single and double legs. 

Unfortunately for Garret and Jordan, they had not been exposed to the arm drag yet.  So Jerad thought starting from standing would be the best introduction.  After we did several reps we moved into the Valley Drop throw which is one of my go to throws.  I was a little hesitant about getting taken down though but I just tried to relax as much as possible and not get in my partner's way as they did the throw.

Next we worked the arm drag from butterfly guard.  Jerad also introduced instead of initiating the wristgrab ourselves that we would do the drag off of the opponent grabbing our wrist first.  This makes a lot of sense and probably helps with the surprise factor.  I'll have to start working on it.  I did have some trouble completing the technique and taking the back.  Finally we worked on countering the arm drag with an arm drag right back. 

We did some guard pass drilling after that with 3 minute rounds.  I probably took some unnecessary risks with my knees while I was in guard.   I shouldn't get too comfortable with the rate that I've been healing, because one wrong move could probably set me back weeks and I don't want that.  Other than those times I was pretty easy going.  I didn't get passed too many times except with Jerad.

During open mat I just rolled with Jordan.  I critiqued a couple of things mostly having to do with guard passing with knee cut and the double unders pass.  There were a couple of times where I wanted to do a triangle but that is on my list of techniques to avoid until I heal.