December 3rd 2013 - Gi Noon & Evening

Noon
Theme & Techniques: Upa Mount escape, Cross collar choke from mount

Bearded Josh joined us again, he has signed up and hopefully will stick around for a while. The most significant thing about practicing the escape was that Greg noticed I was taking a short pause at the top of my bridge.  Changing that made a big difference.

I think I made some improvements on the cross collar.  Instead of trying to bring my opponent down to me I would try to pull myself into them.  This seemed to keep my elbows from flaring as much.  This is a technique that I constantly struggle with and I'm always striving for any improvement.

Rolling: Mount Position (4 x 2 Min Rnd), Free Rolling

Worked with Greg and Josh and they couldn't have been more diametrically opposed experiences.  Greg easily turned my mount into some type of guard several times and then didn't give me a chance to do the same.  So naturally I did the same to Josh, but gave some pointers when he asked.

I rolled with Jordan after class with the objective of maintaining guard as long as possible and looking for sweeps.  He was able to pass it once so I got to work on my side control escapes as well.  He did a great job preventing north/south choke; I was looking for it but he kept his hands in the right places that I didn't make an attempt. 

Evening
Theme & Techniques: Closed guard armbar and pendulum sweep

For some reason several toes on my right foot felt swollen.  Not sure if it was my gout acting up or if I hurt them in the noon class.  Thankfully, they're okay today.  It affected me a few times but once we started rolling I was able to ignore it. 

I am confident with the armbar we practiced, setting it up is something I need to work on.  The pendulum sweep from being stacked was very informative.  Previously I thought the sweep had to be at a 90 degree angle but from the armbar position we sent them at a different angle that wouldn't allow them to base out.  Genius!

Rolling: Guard Gauntlet, King of the mat from closed guard

Didn't make the cut to be on the guard side of the gauntlet, but hopefully I gave the other guys a run for their money.  Jerad gave me the worst time.  His butterfly guard is difficult to deal with.  I did go into it with the goal of standing up to pass which seemed to help.

During KOTM, I had some successes and a few times, not so much.  One lesson to come out of today is that I need to work on my posture and grips more from inside the closed guard. 

WHOYA: December 3rd 2012 - Gi

It looks like this was the introduction to up/down/out.  Greg taught and went over some spider guard.  I think during this period Greg started introducing a lot of new things that would be used in our new school (warm-up, up/down/out, etc).  I also make mention of showing off some of the techniques from the Jeff Glover DVD, which I still need to return.