July 12th 2014 - Kids & Open Mat

Kids' Class

Only 3 kids in attendance today.  My kids are a little bummed that their friend Conor moved up to the older kids class.  However, I told them that they would have to show Greg that they wanted to be in the older class by doing great in the class they're in now.  It worked pretty well as they both tried very hard with everything.  Jayden still doesn't want to count during falls and I'm not sure why.  They played capture the flag and I saw some good things.  A lot of good hand fighting and being aware of their flags.  They both did well with the paintbrush technique.  Jace did laps around the room when it wasn't his turn, I appreciate anything that will use up some of his energy.  We finished the class with blob tag.

Open Mat

Jerad: I hadn't warmed up before we rolled so we did a little slow rolling and he let me drill the smash pass 10 times or so.  When we started seriously rolling it was his day for armbars.  I'm pretty sure he submitted me with 3 of them.  The major reason for this was that I was allowing him to control my arm too much with 2 on 1 and stretch it out and control my hips with his legs.  Despite all of this there were some great scrambles.  I tried the smash pass a few times but he prevented me from getting the underhook and foiled it. 

Henry: This was an awesome match with a lot of action.  I think working with Henry has improved my scrambling immensely.  We went back and forth from guard to side control to half guard to turtle, rinse and repeat.  There were a couple of points where I felt like I was beginning to gas out, but I felt like I eventually got over a wall and was able to keep fighting instead of giving up like I have in the past.  The specifics I remember were defending his collar grips for baseball bat choke as if my life depended on it; him avoiding back mount with his turtle magic; being in bottom half guard and attempting the half guard sweep that Greg showed earlier this week that at least got me guard; also completing a deep half guard sweep.  I ended up in a high guard in the end and went for the kimura, he rolled out of it but I was able to turn it into an armbar. 

Austin:  Worked on a couple of things during my roll with him: setting up the loop choke; setting up the mounted triangle; I played around with the open guard position from a couple months ago.  I asked him if he was working on anything in particular to which he said kimura/hip bump/guillotine from guard.  So we went over some setups for those and I showed him what works for me to combine them together.

Other Notes: Unfortunately I only rolled with 3 people today instead of the usual 6.  FYI for anyone that reads this, if you are at open mat when I'm there, I want to roll with you.  So if you are thinking of getting changed and leaving early and you haven't rolled with me, you're wrong.  I had a talk with Greg about an idea that I had that I'll probably go over in a later blog post.  He assured me that my Jiu-Jitsu is on the right path.

Tim had dislocated his toe during rolling and he ended up going to the hospital to get it fixed up.  It looked pretty nasty but it ended up not being broken and he should be back on the mats soon.  Mend well Tim!