April 12th 2015 - Weekly Review

I'm thinking of making the blog public again this week.  I've worked out what I want to share and the hangups I've had about it before.   


Focus of the Week: Half Guard, Maintaining Backmount, Triangle

Theme & Techniques
Beginner/All Levels: Koshi Guruma, Triangle with punch setup
Partnered and Rolled With: Anthony, Greg, Zack, Josh, Dave, Mike, Robert

I think I've finally found the pieces of the triangle that I've been missing.  It has seemed so simple for the people that I've tried it on to posture out of it.  During the instruction portion, Greg mentioned that he wanted newer students to move the arm over to the other side before completing the triangle but he felt like he didn't need to any longer.  Once I started moving it over in practice it seemed to make it more difficult for them to posture.

The other part that we discussed earlier in the week was to treat the beginning of the triangle like a back mount harness grip.  Once I cross my feet my hips should be up and my knees should be flexed outwards.  Then he added another gem that I've never heard him say before, when putting the shin into the crook of the knee, pull their head toward you a little bit.  It makes it much easier to tighten up the triangle!  Who knows I may start triangling people now, but I won't hold my breath.

Worked with Zack a little on butterfly guard again and Greg gave us some pointers on maintaining back mount after losing position and hooks.


Open Mat
Rolled With: Jerad, Adam, Mike, Sam, Conan, Dwight

Jerad: Had a great roll with Jerad.  A lot of the same but I felt good about some of my performance, I'm stopping to think a lot less I think.  I was able to pass his guard with an x-pass that went pretty well.  I stayed on the top for a while and threatened some things that never came to pass.  He was able to reverse me and from there we dealt with a lot of half guard.  I defended some darces from him, seemed like he really wanted one today.  I don't recall what he got me with in the end.

Adam: We flow rolled for a while before actual rolling.  He started out in guard and I passed to half for a while.  I feel like I did a pretty good job controlling him and squashing his under hook.  Eventually he was able to get to his knees and I wasn't able to guillotine.  He went for back mount which was odd for him.  I don't recall what he tapped me out with either.

I picked his brain a little bit on wrestling and scrambles.  I showed him that I was getting stuck when I came up to turtle from quarter guard with an underhook and he showed me that my head was up too high, I should have been pressuring with my head a lot more to get the far leg.  This is pretty big, as I've been losing in this spot lately or forced back to half guard.

Mike: I had a lot of success with deep half with him.  He said I was pretty close on taking his back with the technique that I've been working on.  There were a few times where he was attempting collar chokes and I was able to nullify them by going into deep half.  I was able to hit a double unders pass from deep half.  He eventually regained guard though and during a scramble we ended up in leg lock position and I tapped from exhaustion, although he would have inevitably got it.

Sam: With her I played some butterfly guard at the start.  I swept her but ended up in her half guard.  I noticed that she's been working on it lately because she went right to an underhook and started the gordo sweep.  I was able to cross face her though and regain composure.  I eventually caught her with what I thought was a barratoplata but it turned out to be more of a cutter, I've got to get my forearm across deeper.  We rolled again and I ended up in a mounted triangle.  Conan came over and helped us figure out an escape plan for the submission.

Conan: I started out strong with Conan, but slowly I became tired and didn't feel like I had anything.  He does a good job at squashing and isolating things, even within my own guard.  Somehow he took my back, probably from side mount and then started a bow and arrow type choke.  I swam my head to the other side and thought I was on my way out, but he had just enough to finish it.  We rolled again but I had nothing in the tank.  He passed my guard and put an americana on me from side mount.

Dwight: I don't know why I rolled with Dwight because I was already feeling pretty worn down, but what the hell?  We went no-gi and we were both so slippery it was hard to pin each other down.  The best thing about this roll was I worked a lot of deep half guard.  I went for the waiter sweep twice and got it both times.  Although I did get stuck for a little while before I was able to sweep.  I think I was trying to push away too much instead of opening a whole for him to fall into.  We ended up quitting the roll after a while because a submission didn't seem likely for a while and we had been rolling for probably 10 minutes.