November 25th - No Gi (Okay it wasn't a Month)

I'm feeling pretty good after going to Jiu-Jitsu a couple of times this weekend.  My knees feel loose and strong.  I thought since my family was out of town this weekend I would give Jiu-Jitsu a try.  I know, I didn't take a "full" month off, and I express my thanks to everyone that pointed that out.  Now the question is, should I return or take another month off.  There are things that I still don't feel comfortable doing, like Judo throws and some wrestling.  Maybe another month would do me some good but after getting a little taste and feeling good after class I want to come back.  I have to think about what will be better for me in the long term.

Ray was nice enough to make the theme of the class be a deep half guard review.  Perfect, I love this position right now and I picked up on somethings that I have been doing incorrectly up until now.  The main thing that I picked up was that I need to be flat on my back once I'm in the position.  This makes such a difference to the person on top's balance and preventing them from stepping over.  Then it also made it easier to roll to the side and do the leg drag. 

We did another sweep after that using the feet to do a somewhat reverse heel hook.  The last technique that we did was a back take which I hadn't worked on before.  Both of these techniques require a little bit of flexibility to get the feet and shins in the right place.

We did some king of the mat training next from half guard trying to pass/sweep/submit.  We did just two groups.  As expected Ray, Adam, and Jerad held the bottom positions the most.  With a lot of work the coolest thing that happened was me catching Adam in a guillotine.  I really just wanted him to release his half guard but I actually got him to tap.  I don't count it as an official tap since we were doing a specific exercise but it was cool nonetheless.  There were several times when I felt like I was tricked.  I would feel like I was just about to pass Jerad and he would make it seem easy for me to take mount and when I did he timed it perfectly to roll me over.  There were a couple of other things like that, that were frustrating.

During open mat I spent some time with the new guy, Stanley.  I tried to show him some of the basic stuff that everyone should learn.  I like watching new students progress mostly to see how other people learn.  Let's see if he sticks around.

I rolled with Jerad next and he was really nice to me in the beginning.  He allowed me to take top position, pass his guard and even mount.  Somehow I ended up back in side mount later and saw an opportunity for a north/south choke.  I could tell that it wasn't working although it was tight and I was keeping him there I could hear him breathing normal.  I decided to abandon it and go back to side control.  He set up a shin sweep perfectly and I was on the bottom after that.  I defended the darce several times but like usual he got me when I was turtled and rolled me over.  Tap.