December 9th - No Gi

We did a really knee intensive class yesterday and I survived just fine.  We had a couple of visitors which made for a big Sunday class with 10 of us.  After a good calisthenic warmup we started on some wrestling.  Most of it centered around the sit-out.  Conan had a good idea of having us do it with a partner first and then work on it individually.  I think it was the right thing to do for the new people to get an idea of what they are trying to accomplish.  After working it alone we got with a partner and worked on sit-outs from a failed shot.

We continued with the sprawl position and worked on a couple of chokes from there.  We did the darce first and there seemed to be a little confusion on which way to roll or if to roll at all, but we all got it in the end.  The anaconda is the mirror of the darce in that the bicep hook up happens behind the armpit and the darce is behind the neck.  I must have short arms because both of these chokes are difficult for me to lock up.

During open mat I rolled with Conan twice.  He let me take the top position right away and I tried my best to keep it.  He is so good at stringing together escape attempts and displacing my balance.  Conan is also about head control, always shoving my head around to put me where he wants me or prevent what I'm trying to do.  Every time I went for deep half guard or a side control escape he would catch me with a crossface and center me back up.  He finally submitted me with an americana.  Our second match didn't finish because we had to bow out and finish class.  I felt like I was doing a little better from top that time.

Fuji destroyed me again once I was on the bottom.  I couldn't do anything but defend his arm triangle choke attempts and I failed at that.  I made some attempts to go to turtle but he rolled me back over again.  There is a lot of pressure down there and I need to keep learning how to deal with it.

I rolled with Jerad last and while I had a highlight Homer Simpson sweep from deep half guard he was able to get top position and take control of me in mount like Friday.  He did a great job of setting up an armbar from there and while I could see it coming I couldn't stop it.

I have a goal to improve my turtle transitions.  To help me with that I'm going to do 50 sit-outs, 50 bridge to tripods every night on my own.  As well I'm going to start doing pull-ups again.