January 11th 2014 - Kids, Competition, & Open Mat

Kids:

The boys did pretty well today.  They both did all of the animal walks without any problems and they tried a little harder during 1 on 1 foot tag.  They practiced the knee escape from side control, which went pretty well except for getting off track a couple of times.  We finished the class with blob tag and the kids got a little crazy towards the end.  I could tell it took a little bit out of Greg.

Competition Class:

I partnered up with Jorge again for this session.  Andrew from North Platte, joined us to prepare for the tournament as well.  We did a couple rounds of drilling escapes from bad positions.  Then the tough part we did a minute of each conditioning exercise.  I'm pretty sure we did all of the burpees with some lunges and push-ups in between.

We worked on our techniques.  Everything feels great except I'm still getting a sore neck when practicing the single leg.  I was a little worried that I'd lost my mojo with the omoplata but I think it's coming back to me now as I hit it a couple times today during rolling.

We finished the class with some matches and Greg partnered me up with Andrew.  My goal was to not gas out.  I ended up pulling guard but then immediately sweeping.  From there I spent most match in a dominant position, except for once where he escaped my back mount and rolled over into guard.  But the omoplata sweep was there to save me.

Open Mat:

Fuji and I worked together on the ideal game drill.  I used my secret weapon technique that I am not willing to divulge yet and Fuji worked on his ideal game.  Later on Fuji and I had a talk about last week's roll.  While it was a big confidence boost for me, he said that he also got some encouragement out of it.  It made him want to refocus his efforts on the basics and drill his escapes.  That was pretty cool to hear.  

Conan and Jerad both handed my ass to me.  Although I did spend a little time in mount with Jerad on our second roll I feel pretty helpless against his guard passing.  I thought about it a little bit and I'm not sure how much of that is me expecting him to inevitably pass and instead of fighting it to my best ability, I think I'm conserving my energy.  But, I know it actually takes more energy to escape a bad position than to fight to maintain guard.  Conan pointed something similar out to me.  That I wasn't actively trying to escape his side control but just stave off his attacks for as long as I could.  I think it has something to do with lack of confidence against people that I know are better than me.  Not sure how to get over that.

I did my weekly roll with Jorge which was similar to our other rolls.  I spend all of my time attempting submissions and he defends them.  It's a great workout for both of us.  I can't wait until he figures out some escapes, then it will be interesting.  I rolled with Andrew again a few times and played guard until I could sweep.  From there I stayed in side control quite a bit in order to keep him from turning over into turtle.  After rolling a couple times I gave him some pointers on passing guard with the gi.  Hopefully my pointers were welcome.