March 4th - Gi (Get your knee off me, Fuji)

Jerad warmed us up with some of the usual stuff until Greg could take over.  I helped a new guy out with the shrimping and rolls the best I could.  The focus of class was on attacking from knee on belly.  We started with the baseball bat choke which was surprising since it seems like we usually start with farside armbar when this class is taught.  The key thing that I didn't use before with this technique was the knee slide over their arm to take away their defense.  From there if they defended higher our next response was to kick over into armbar.  We worked that for quite a while and I had some trouble at first bringing my foot across their body if they were able to lock their hands up.

We did the up/down/out drill starting from side control with the intent of going to knee on belly and then submitting.  I didn't have much success from the top.  Everyone was hypervigilent of the knee so just getting their was difficult in itself.  Fuji destroyed my stomach twice when he was on top.  I didn't feel like there was any chance to escape and had to tap from the position rather than any actual submission.  I thought I was making some progress on Jerad but I think he was playing around letting people get pretty far before defending the position.

I rolled with Ken and Mike after class.  Ken has been very frustrating, he has been passing my guard pretty easily it seems just by circling around until I can't keep up.  I need to find an answer for that.  I was doing a good job with butterfly guard before that, but couldn't complete any sweep.  Once he passed, he had me pinned pretty well from side mount and then mount.  He submitted with an armbar. 

Mike and I had a good back and forth.  I had some trouble with his collar grip and I knee that I should have focused on getting it off but I wasn't sure how much effort I should focus on it.  More would be the answer.  It seemed like we spent equal time on top and bottom.  I almost had a back take close to the end but couldn't get a hold of his pants to keep him down.  He eventually got me in leg lock position and I tapped because it was my left knee and I didn't want to chance anything.  Jerad had some good points later on about guard passing, that I need to squat more instead of lean over and also to keep my elbow tight to my knee.  I'm getting back to my goal of improving my guard passing, the knee problems have been limiting progress here as of late.