December 6th - Gi

I was excited to hear that we were going to work on the De La Riva (DLR) guard.  It's been a while since I've done any actual class time with it.  Usually while rolling I find myself somewhere in between open guard, spider, half guard, reverse DLR, and then deep half.  I usually don't end up in regular DLR.  Maybe because I feel like I have so few options from here.  I've got a back take and a sweep (that I often can't complete) and that's it. 

Here is an explanation of the DLR: De La Riva Guard.  As an introduction we worked on getting into the position from someone standing in our guard then we worked on the back take which is getting a butterfly hook in and then moving to the waterfall sweep.  Next we worked on the omma plata when they are trying to back away and leave their arm out there.  So I added that to my list.  Next Gi class I'm going to try to practice "Technique #4 "Back Trip Sweep vs Stand-up" from that link I posted above.  That looks pretty effective.

From there the class shifted and we worked on escapes from omma plata.  We went over: 1. Getting underneath them and rolling them over us.  2. Stepping over their head to change the angle on their arm and take side control.  3. Grab their arm between your legs and do an omma plata back to them while rolling. (don't really like this one, but it's kind of cool.  4. The final one was to get your posture then push on their hip and flip them over into turtle.  David kept putting me into a triangle on that last one.  Not sure what I was doing wrong.

We did king of the mat guard passing for open mat.  I had a fair amount of success and was able to keep the bottom position for 3 or 4 rounds in a row.  I can remember going with Fuji, David, Will, Justin and a couple of the new guys.  Most of the time I was trying the bull fighter pass, but I found out later that my posture was incorrect which is something that I need to work on.  My arms are too outstretched and knees are straight and I'm bending over too far.  Instead of squatting down low and elbows bent and in low.

I rolled with Fuji.  He was kind enough to start in bottom guard for me to give me a chance.  I was able to pass his guard and had side control for a little while.  I got a little stuck here not sure what to do, north/south choke would be difficult, he wasn't giving me far side armbar, arm triangle was attempted but I couldn't lock it up.  I should have probably went to mount but that would be tough to keep as well.  He eventually was able to go to turtle and then he just stood up.  How disheartening was that.  I didn't know what to do and after a failed Judo throw attempt I ended up in his side control.  He worked his magic smashing me and working on getting my gi undone and around my shoulder and then my neck and finally when I got my arm free it became a choke.  Ugh, I mentioned to him that I often don't feel that hopeless in a roll anymore.  Maybe I should roll with Fuji more often.