October 28th - No Gi

Conan had something to do, so for the first 5 minutes of class I was the teacher until Jerad got there.  I ran us through a little warm-up of shrimping and other stuff up and down the floor and then armbar and omma plata drill from guard.  Jerad had us work on some guard passes which was great because I've been thinking about working on them lately since I've been more comfortable with getting on my knees again.

We worked on several passes starting from the regular hands on the stomach knee in the butt then turn sideways guard break.  From there we did a couple versions of the knee over pass with and without underhooking the leg and then sliding to the other side.  Then we did single and double under passes using stacking and pressure on their legs.  The final thing we worked on was to break the guard by standing up and dropping their butt over the shin, which is always fun.

Open mat with both Adam and Jerad went better than expected for me.  Adam and I had quite a battle and I felt like I really took it to him and defended well.  I did a lot of squirming and regaining half guard or going to turtle when I could.  Lately I've had limited success with the inverted triangle from bottom side mount which seems to at least annoy people and help me get to some kind of guard.  I used it a couple of times with Adam as he likes to put me in north/south.  I also tried some wristlocks on him since I know he doesn't like them.  Finally I went for a heel hook but it wasn't meant to be.  After that he smashed me in side control and secured a kimura.

I got lucky with Jerad during the first match.  I don't remember what helped me get on top but I was able to take side control and somehow worked into the inverted triangle.  We struggled there for a while as I tried to tighten it and he tried to get out eventually I saw and opportunity and reached down for his foot and put him into a toe hold.  With him in the triangle he had no where to go so he had to tap.  In our second match I almost got him into the inverted triangle again but he wasn't going to let me do it twice.  I remember making it to deep half once and actually completing the sweep but not to the extent that Ray was showing me with a leg drag so I need to work on that.  Somehow I screwed that up and he was able to get back to the top position and all the way to mount.  Lately he's been getting me with the gift wrap position from here so I've been taking special care to defend that, I guess he was expecting that and he threw on a mounted triangle as soon as I pulled my arm down.  It took me completely by surprised and I wasn't able to put up much of a fight.