December 2nd - No Gi

I took some crap from Fuji before class about coming back too soon.  I went a little defensive and told him to mind his own business and then smacked his mouth.  Well not really, but we talked about my addictive personality a bit.  I don't deny it and consider it to be a good trait to some extent.  I know he means well and is just looking out for me.  Too be honest, I feel the best I've felt since my injury.  My knees feel strong and stable but although they do get fatigued after a good workout.  

Conan announced the theme of the class to be "how to defeat Ray."  Which is cool.  But then it appeared that we were working on foiling the deep half guard, which I do not support.  The trouble with adopting something into your game that a senior student uses extensively is that since they are better than you, your other training partners are already good at defending it. 

I ended up working with Stanley again from last week.  Which was cool, I love to teach.  The other theme of the day was on the knee slide pass.  We did the knee shake half guard pass and then knee slid once our knee was free.  It moved into blocking deep half with a cross face and then getting the underhook and switching to knee slide.  We then defended the deep half if they got in really tight by pushing on their head stepping over.  Finally we worked on attacking the arm, which I have a lot of trouble with when I'm on the bottom.

During open mat I rolled with Ken first and was feeling pretty confident in the beginning.  I used my cross guard to omma plata effectively once and was able to sweep.  Somehow I lost the top position with him stiff arming me and ended up on the bottom.  He pulled off some funky americana kind of using his legs and his arms.  I probably wasn't in too much danger but I was stuck and it was at a weird angle.  Rather than risk injury I decided to tap.

I rolled with Jerad a few times.  Again felt confident in the beginning and was able to mount him for a while.  He tricked me as usual by making me think I had a guillotine and then quickly reversing me and I ended up with nothing.  I tried the omma plata again but he postured up really well.  Fast forward to me in half guard and not able to get to deep half.  Both of our matches ended up with ankle locks and I wasn't going to fight those too much.