May 7th 2013 - Gi

Was really excited to go to class last night.  It was a hell of a workout throughout.  Warmed up with shrimping and rolling down the floor followed by some abs and neck exercises. 

For the main portion of the class we worked from guard on the concept of pendulum sweeps.  I felt like I was doing pretty well with this as this sweep is something that I already incorporate into my game.  Although I usually only do it if I have the giftwrap.  We set this up by wrapping their gi around their back instead.  Then we load them up onto our legs and make a huge armbar motion and then sweep the leg back and use the momentum to rock them over.  I ended up practicing this with Adam and Patrick as there was an odd number of students. 

We followed that up with two submissions.  The armbar which was difficult for us big guys to get our leg around their head from the pendulum position.  Then we worked on a collar/darce/arm triangle choke thingy which was really cool.  I had it demonstrated on me several times and almost went out because it was so tight.  We used the gi around the back to switch to a cross grip then pull their elbow across and bury it under our bicep.  From their we just pull down on our head making a very tight choke.

We spent the rest of the class with training guard passing up/down/out.  It really kicked my ass and it seemed like everyone got pretty tired.  One cool thing that happened was I pulled off a cross grip to omaplata on Greg which I wasn't able to finish or sweep but it seemed to surprise him and he gave me some kudos afterwards.  I had a lot of problems with Jerad in my guard standing up and then leg dragging me.  Greg gave me three options of going to dlr (de la riva) or reverse dlr or spider guard.  I am in the process of researching dlr as I don't know much to do from there.

I love that we stretch now after class.  I think that it is going to help a lot as workouts get harder.  Regardless I felt so wasted after class last night.  Went home and had a big glass of chocolate milk and vegged out for a while with my ice packs and feet up.