January 30th 2014 - No Gi

Theme & Techniques: 1 Legged-X guard entry and sweep

I was pretty excited as I've been wanting to work on this position for a while.  I've done it a little bit with Mike and I've had it done to me plenty of times.  It's pretty similar to the x-guard setups that I know with the major difference of focusing on the near leg instead of the far one.  I worked with Adam for this portion of class.  He had jammed his thumb pretty badly in the previous class and it noticeably bothered him several times.  The key to the sweep was to put pressure outward first then back in and then finish the sweep by pushing back out. 

Rolling: Free Rolling (4 x 7 min rnds)

Everyone rolled with everyone.  Greg was first and I don't feel like I did anything particularly well against him except defend back mount for a while.  There was a little deep half guard but I wasn't able to turn it into anything.

Henry had my number tonight.  Every good thing I did, he was able to slip out of, literally we were pretty sweaty.  He caught me in a triangle/armbar, and some guillotines.  I think I need to roll with Henry more.  Especially to deal with his pace and his strength.  I observed Greg and Henry roll and got some insight of some things that I need to improve on.  Like flowing a little more, being tighter in back mount, stick with him when I've got a choke locked up, etc.

I had a decent roll with Adam.  He got me with an interesting darce setup pretty quickly but after that I was able to play some guard and attack a little bit. 

The highlight of my night was with Conan. He allowed me to pass and take side control from there I worked my game and did my best not to be lulled into any of his traps.  I attempts north/south choke and transitioned to guillotine and then I was able to get back to the north/south choke and finish it.  I put the pressure on methodically and hand fought to get the correct grips and sunk as low as I could and he eventually tapped.  Second roll Conan was not as pliable and ended up passing my butterfly guard and grinding me down in side control until he setup a tight kimura.