July 26th 2014 - Cross School Open Mat at MAMA

Today our school was invited to Mid-America Martial Arts here in Lincoln.  It was a fantastic idea and it seemed like everyone had a good time and I didn't witness any bad blood or injuries!  They set up four different rings with a ref and a someone to keep time.  Whenever a match ended they asked for 2 more volunteers for the next match.  There were no brackets or weight classes just first come first serve.  I think we represented our school pretty well and from my point of view the skill levels were consistent by belt color. 

After rolling with 2 blue belts from MAMA (I wish I could remember their names) my forearms were pretty burned out.  I think that was the major take away from today.  I've got to ease up on the death grip in my early matches.  I also rolled with Air Force Brian, Jimbo, Josh H., Mike (tumbleweed), and Ray.  I was hoping to roll with one of their purple belts to see what it was like but it never worked out. 

Some personal things of note.  The north/south choke was working very well for me today.  I wasn't able to always finish it but my setup is coming along pretty naturally.  I used cross guard and omoplata sweep when I could.  Didn't finish the submission though.  I think the only person that submitted me today was Ray with a straight ankle lock.  Otherwise I lost one other time to points against one of the MAMA blue belts (Ron maybe), he was very good at guard passing.  After getting over my forearm burn I relaxed a lot more and felt like I was able to move a lot better. 

Jimbo and I hadn't met in person before today, but we've been friends on Facebook.  We sat and talked for quite a while about our past jobs and found out we were both Marines.  We also discussed how much teaching highschool was similar to being a correctional officer.  Then we had a light roll and took it easy on each other or tried to anyway.  After we rolled he showed me this pretty cool half guard pass to a bread cutter choke that I want to try. 

I felt better about my performance with Ray than usual.  I at least off balanced him a little with my cross guard.  Made him say "damn cross guard!"  He setup a straight ankle eventually but I did mount a decent defense up until that point.  Conversely when I rolled with Mike I attempted a knee bar out of nowhere.  I wasn't able to finish it and converted to a straight ankle which I couldn't finish either.  I think my inside foot was ending up in uncomfortable places for him. 

After taking the picture below they brought in some hamburgers and other food.  All I could stomach was some watermelon that hit the spot.  There was some good comradery going on.  Hopefully this is the first of many open mats.