September 28th 2014 - Weekly Review

Theme & Techniques
Beginner/All Levels: Koshi Gurma, Kimura from side control, Tripod Side control escape

In both Tuesday and Friday I put my teacher hat on for a bit.  Tuesday I worked with Kyle on his first day, his son attends the kids class.  He actually did quite well which may be from watching the kids do it.  On Friday there was a point when Greg was indisposed and I helped some of the other groups with their kimuras.

The piece I focused on the most was during the kimura keeping the hand above the shoulder in the beginning.  A good defense to stop this technique from the beginning is to bury you hand in their armpit so they can't control it using their head and shoulder.  Greg gave us some pointers to apply pressure to the knuckles to help prevent them hiding it. 

Also Greg gave a little extra instruction on Friday adding that we could go to half guard if the opponent put on a really good wizzer as we were coming up during the tripod escape.  Which fed well into deep half guard.

Advanced: Single Leg-X Entry from Butterfly Guard against knees and combat base

We had a visitor, Bethany, who is a purple belt from Florida and a world champion.  She was very skillful and a pleasure to watch, especially because she gave Henry a hell of time on their first roll.  In general it's an enjoyable class when we have a visitor, because I think everyone wants to represent and show how good our school is.  I had the opportunity to roll with her once during KOTM and had a really tough time as well. 

This class made me never want to begin a roll in combat base again.  I already kind of knew this but it is so easy for someone to get single leg-x off of someone in combat base.  The techniques were all similar to the guard pull to single leg-x that we worked on several weeks ago so it was a good review.  I also used this several times while rolling throughout the week. 

I felt in the zone during the rolling portion of class.  Both guard passing and guard retention were flowing well and I was able to pass and sweep some people that I usually don't.  I even almost took Greg's back, but wasn't able to seal the deal.

Open Mat

Had fewer training partners than I would have liked, but got some good training in regardless.  I spent most of my time with Jerad and we had some show and tell between rolls of what we are working on.  I started the day off playing a little lazy and then after Jerad informed me that it didn't seem like I was being as persistent as I usually am, I stepped it up a bit.  I went over north/south choke defense with Brian.  Seems like I've been sharing the defense for that a lot lately.

I was able to work some deep half guard which has been going well throughout the week.  I've watched the first 2 DVDs in the Ryan Hall set a couple times, but I'm saving the third for a later date.  I already feel like there is way too much information to process. 

Esteemed Colleagues and Honorable Mentions

Jerad: He was there for my first class and has been a huge part of my development since.  I have assimilated some of his techniques into my game like the darce choke and more recently the mounted triangle.  The most frustrating thing is that he's able to shut down most of my guard game and things that I'm good at.  I am always challenged by Jerad and he's provided some pretty good and timely advice so far.