June 21st 2014 - Kids & Open Mat (Back Takes and N/S Chokes)

Kids' Class

There only ended up being 1 other kid besides my own this morning, so I hung back more and let Greg and Jerad handle them.  It seems like Jayden wants to be silly and kind of the class clown a lot of the time.  For now I'm kind of letting it slide and hopefully he'll get tired of it.  Mostly it's just the beginning stuff.  I know he can do shrimping and all of the animal walks really well but he often goes pretty slow until he gets noticed. 

They did Sumo for the first game and I saw them try some things that I worked with them on last Sunday.  Mostly it had to do with off balancing rather than just pushing back and forth.  Their technique was O-Soto Gari which they did well.  And, finishing the class with blob tag.


Open Mat

I brought my son Jace back with me.  He had a Gameboy and some toys but ended up mostly playing catch with me and Greg.  He seemed excited to come back next week.  When we showed up, a competition class was just finishing up.  We have a team getting ready for an IBJJF tournament coming up in Chicago.  I was puzzled as I didn't see anything posted but it ended up being by invitation for the people competing.  A little bit of a bummer because I really love those competition classes, but understand that the people competing need personal attention. 

Conan: Henry had said he wanted to roll directly after the class but ended up declining and pretending like he was going to change and then rolled with someone else.  So I sauntered over to Conan and rolled with him for a while.  I worked hard from top at first and was able to pass his guard.  From there I tried all of my attacks kimura, farside armbar, knee on belly, north/south choke, and guillotine.  None of it worked although I think I was pretty close with the north/south choke.  Eventually he regained guard and swept me he even went to mount which I don't recall him ever doing to me before.  I worked hard to try to escape but he eventually finished with a kimura I think.  He complimented me on my bridging and that I made it difficult for him to submit me.

Jerad: We had several great rolls together.  The thing that bothers me most about his game is how tightly he keeps his leg pressure.  It is very difficult to escape his mount or to get to deep half from half guard where I'm usually pretty good at that.  I don't recall how, but I was able to take Jerad's back for a while at one point and set up a bow and arrow, but he got his hand on his collar and prevented it.  I believe he submitted me twice or more and I was able to catch him once with a north/south choke.

Mike: We started out with me on the bottom in some type of de la riva guard and with a lot of work and back and forth I turned it into back mount and worked for an RNC.  For some reason our rolls are a little fuzzy.  I remember some 50/50 and him straight ankle locking me and then going over some 50/50 sweeps.  I think I caught him in a north/south choke as well in the next roll. 

Gina: It's been a long time since we've rolled, for quite a while we've been on different class schedules.  Her game seemed to be to pull me into her guard and I was preventing that.  She was doing a good job preventing my guard passing where I'd get almost passed and then her knee would sneak in.  Probably the most difficult part was trying not to smash her as she is a little lady.  She was able to escape my side control a few times with the stiff arm escape.  Probably the coolest thing I did was the rolling back take from quarter guard. 

Mo: He ended up defending a few submissions that I thought I was going to complete.  There was a loop choke that I attempted but didn't use my legs to hold him and he was able to roll out of it and then he did a good job hand fighting from back mount.  I ended up showing him the back mount technique to cross legs and hip in to open them up and get the hook in.  He even did a good job of defending my north/south choke at first, but I still pulled it off.

Tim: I played some guard with him and at one point hit a sickle sweep which I showed Tim after we rolled.  My main objective from the top was to setup the baseball bat choke and look for the armbar when they attempt to defend the choke, I am really liking this technique.  Tim asked about the hitch-hiker escape from an armbar and we also talked about some other escapes like triangling your arms like in an RNC.