May 26th 2014 - Open Mat

My wonderful beautiful wife didn't protest too much when I went in for our special Memorial day open mat.  Thanks to Jerad for opening up the school.  Looking back now, I only rolled with 3 people but 2 hours went by quickly.  Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to roll with Henry, Brian AF, and Dwight who were also in attendance. 

Mike: I don't remember much from our actual roll except that it lasted a long time and it ended with me being choked with a brabo.  He gave me some advice on dealing with a standing opponent from my open guard.  He suggested to pick a couple of guards and work towards them instead of just using my feet on hips.  Also my distance and controlling sleeves and/or lapels is an important detail I'm missing.  I requested a refresher on loop choke and there were a couple details that I think will help in the future.  We reviewed a wristlock that he had seen on a video, which was nice, but not really my style (you think it would be).  Finally we worked on an arm drag from spider guard which was new to me.  I really enjoyed it and it may be the thing I try on the new guys.

Austin: I did no-gi with Austin and mostly worked some x-guard and single leg x and some back control.  Towards the end of our rolls I had him start in side control and showed him the twister side control to mount.  We went back to that position a couple times and I gave him a few pointers on how I like to escape the mount.

Jerad: The first roll with Jerad I felt like his guard was impassible.  He feels like he's made the skill gap between us a lot greater.  He ended the roll by setting a nice triangle that I started to posture out of but once he switched to a bolt lock and then back to a triangle my posture was broken and I had to tap.  Went a little loopy from that one.  I turned it up on our second roll and threw everything I could at passing his guard.  I felt like I came really close but eventually got sucked back into his guard and then swept.  I don't remember how he submitted me after that.  We discussed open guard a little and the importance of knee and shin placement for both the guard player and passer.