January 3rd - Gi (Project No-Roll)

So I've been mulling over some ways to finally get over this knee injury.  Right when I think I'm getting better and am able to push myself once again, I injure it all over again.  This generally happens while rolling, so the best thing I figure that I can do short of going on another hiatus is to stop rolling for a while.  It's going to kill me, but I think it's the best thing to do to keep my sanity and heal.  The stipulation on when I can return to rolling is when I can do the butterfly stretch or sitting criss-cross without my knee hurting.

Yesterday Conan taught with a theme of guard passing from within the closed guard.  The first one we did was new to me, if the opponent is controlling your sleeves and you can pin a hand to the floor the reach under their back and grab their sleeve.  From their stand-up and shake them off like skinny jeans.  A couple of the other passes used the same skinny jean shake off.

We then went to double under pass which I know and use.  From there we did a single under which I don't use that often except for the over/under pass which is quite a bit different.  The first one was kind of a knee bar or compression on the quad, it was pretty effective.  One of the main things to remember when doing a single leg over type of pass is to position your arm and elbow on the other leg so they can't lock their ankles together or pull your arm into a triangle.  It really sucks when that happens. 

The last pass that we worked on was putting them into a half butterfly and then smashing their thigh to the floor and escaping over the knee.  I use this pass often as well as it compliments my over/under pass position if I can't get under their leg I resort to this pass instead.

During open mat I forced myself to just watch everyone.  David and Will had a really good match that had a lot of back and forth to it and some excitement.  As well as Fuji and Adam had some good moments.  It kind of sucked being a fly on the wall and having to turn people down that asked me to roll.  I have to hold to my convictions though.  Maybe someone will be willing to drill with me during open mat time.

I also tried on Ray's Tatami gi to get an idea of the size I should order.  His A4 fit me pretty well.  So, I went home and ordered the Estilo Premier 3.0 in Navy blue.  Apparently estilo is Spanish for style.  It looks pretty sharp and I can't wait to get it.  I'll post a short review and some pictures after I get it.