August 29th 2014 - Gi (Office Hours)

Theme & Techniques: Scarf Hold Escape, Roll Over from Turtle to Side or Back Mount
Partnered With: Anthony (Bandana)

Before class started, Dave made the comment that he considers the after class rolling that I do as my "office hours."  I'm flattered considering I am not a professor...yet.  For me the rolling that I do after class has been indispensable.  I know not everyone can stick around and I make sure that Greg is okay with us staying.  I usually use it for extra rolling time and I'll often give or get pointers on things that come up.  

Went over some instruction on the scarf hold from the top with Anthony to help him understand the pressure of the position.  I put a little more pressure on him toward the end of the exercise to show how important getting the elbow free is.  He didn't have any real problems with the turtle stuff except for moving up the hip placement during the back take.  Seems like he's picking things up very well.

Rolling: Turtle position (4 x 2 min), Free Rolling (2 x 4 min)
Rolled with: Anthony, Ross, Brian (FF)

Turtle position went fine, Ross came the closest to taking my back.  I didn't have as much success with the granby roll, but no one was looking for me to regain guard. 

On the way to class I decided to rekindle my aggressiveness in guard initiative so instead of laying back and letting them come to me, I tried to push forward and attack.  This resulted mostly in putting me in a good position for butterfly guard sweeps or in single leg x-guard.  I was especially seeing the hand fighting to underhooks that Greg was showing a couple weeks ago to the advanced class.  This makes a lot of sense why people have been passing me lately, I'm in the mid-range, that is better for the passer, when playing more aggressive I was able to get more under my partner and control their posture more.  I will be experimenting with this.

Office Hours: Dave, Austin

After playing a little more with my aggressive guard, I stopped at one point in mount on Dave and asked him what he would do to get out of it.  I then walked him through the upa escape, a guard pass and a farside armbar with a little resistance.  Kind of like the perfect gameplan drill.  The next time we rolled I joked with him and told him it was serious this time.

The first roll with Austin I took advantage of his really wide combat base and slipped into single leg x.  He complained that all of the blue belts did that to him, so I showed him that he needed to tighten up his combat base.  Then let him practice single leg x on me with a wide base and see easy it was to get to the position when all that space is there.  Later on I caught him with a head and arm choke to which he had a hard time defending.  I showed him the under knee grab defense and on our following roll, setup the same choke so he could try it.