January 31st 2014 - Gi

Theme & Techniques: Guard Breaking, Single Under Pass

Had a different group than the average Friday morning.  Ray, Darjio, and Brian L.  Whom hence forth will be referred to as "Bendy" Brian.  Greg kept with the theme of the week so I had another opportunity to work on breaking the closed guard.  Not much to report about the techniques otherwise except Brian has really long legs and good technique is needed to break his guard.

Rolling: Closed Guard Position (6 x 2 min rnds)

Greg read my mind (or my blog from Tuesday) and had us work specifically on breaking the guard.  I had a pretty hard time with Brian, I tried everything and even got ankle grab swept when I tried the standing break.  I asked Greg about this after class since this is the 2nd time this has happened to me recently.  He gave me 2 possible changes.  The first was to try a pistol grip instead of the normal sleeve grip since my fingers are a little jacked right now.  Second was to attempt to circle step out of the ankle grips and reach down and grab the sleeve from there.  I didn't have as much trouble breaking Darjio's guard, but we're built similarly with short legs and my experience helped.  I think this is something I'll be drilling in the near future.

We went to just guard pass/sweep/submit drill after that with Ray as my partner.  There was one point when Ray was working on passing my guard and I threw my leg over his head to regain and Greg said something to the effect of "Ray, Josh both of you keep doing what you're doing."  We both paused and chuckled a bit and then continued.  It was great rolling with him and I hope we're in class together more often.  I finished the morning off with Brian and had a little more success when we could do more than closed guard.  I left feeling like I didn't get enough rolling in but hopefully I can make up for it tomorrow morning.