February 11th 2014 - Gi Noon & Evening

Noon
Theme & Techniques: Osoto Gari defense for choke, Basic Back Mount Escape, RNC

I was joined in class by Bhuvana, Fuji, and Tim.  It's possible that we'll be focusing on backmount this week.  I played the instructor role a little bit as I walked Bhuvana through the back escape and then through the choke.  In the end she made some progress.  I suggested she try the choke your own knee exercise to practice her RNC.

Rolling: Back Mount Position, Free Rolling

We only had time for one round of positional rolling.  When Bhuvana said she couldn't escape my back mount Greg made a comment to the effect of "if you could escape that would mean Josh sucks."  Which put some extra pressure on me to not let her escape.  She did seem to panic a was a little spazzy which is understandable.

I rolled with Fuji a couple times after class and he dominated me sufficiently.  He was nice enough to not use his brabo choke at first but eventually got frustrated enough to resort to it.  Later on I had him in half guard and Greg pointed out that I needed to prevent his crossface before I started reaching for the underhook.  I am just leaving my head out there to be smashed.  There was also a point when I was in his half guard but was so worried about his lasso that I didn't do the right thing to flatten him out.  I also had an omoplata setup at one point but couldn't get my head to the other side.  Later Greg told me I should have used it to reclaim guard when I got stuck.

Evening
Theme & Techniques: Basic Back Mount Escape, RNC

This was probably the worst training experience I've ever had with Adam.  Escaping the back mount was fine, but when it came to working on the Rear Naked Choke it was awful.  He had a real hard time getting his muscly arm into the right position to lock up the choke.  Several times I wanted to tap way earlier from pain but I also wanted to wait for him to get the technique correct.  Of course there's no hard feelings, but it turned out to be a hard day on my neck.

Rolling: Back Mount Position Up/Down/Out, Free Rolling

I performed as expected during positional sparring.  Got some bow and arrows and completed some escapes I also got bow and arrowed and RNC'd. I rolled with Jerad for a five minute round and he was able to beat me rather handily the first time with mounted triangle.  The second roll I was a little more aggressive and was on top for a little while.  I think I focused so much before on trying to do the perfect correct response which would often cause me to hesitate and then be a step behind my opponent.  This change in strategy has been a very positive experience.  Jerad ended up hurting his neck when trying to base out on his head during one of my sweeps, hopefully it's not too serious.

Mike and I went over some new thing called the pancake guard that he saw on a Keenan Cornelius video.  It seems pretty interesting.  We also talked about how to prevent Fuji's lasso guard.  Somehow we ended up rolling and I had a great time.  When we roll, we end up in so many obscure positions that I don't get into with anyone else.  The best things I did were getting to deep half but not being able to do much with it.  We went over a sweep that uses the bottom of the gi skirt to establish grips.  I may drill that the next time we have a choose your own drill.

I think I may focus on back takes for a while and try to improve my back mount in general as my next project.  I put the question out to Greg if there was anything he thought I should focus on, so I'll see what he says.