May 13th 2015 - Gi All Levels

Theme & Techniques: Rear Naked Defense with Shoulder Throw, Farside Armbar from Side Control, Scissor Sweep
Partner: Henry

Fantastic class today.  Had Mike and Henry in preparing for the tournament, I'm always happy to train with other blues. 

Henry launched me a couple of times with the first technique.  I think I was a little too centered on his back a few times.  I think the most important part of this technique that's difficult to train is automatically reaching up and grabbing the wrist as soon as someone puts their arm around you.  I feel pretty confident in my reaction to this, due to me repeatedly foiling Jerad's attempts to sneak up on me.

On the armbar I focused on pushing the face as much as I could.  Henry pointed out that I wasn't using head pressure as much as I should which does feel stronger.  Nothing really to report on the scissor sweep.  We both talked about pushing their foot into half guard after being scissor swept.

Rolling: Tournament Prep Hell Drill (4 x 3 min), Free Rolling Shark Tank (2 x 4 min)
Rolled With: Henry, Mike (Tumbleweed)

Greg had us do half of the hell drill for the competitors.  So I was on the attacking end.  The one change was that they weren't supposed to stop if they escaped the bad position, they were supposed to keep going to a submission.   Had some good things happen.  I attacked some bow and arrow type chokes and maintained each position for a while.  Ultimately I ended up in bottom half guard several times and passed to side mount 2 or 3 times.  I don't think either of us submitted the other, but I could be misremembering.  There were a few times where I felt like I should have went for an armbar as he was escaping backmount, not sure what was holding me back besides worried about losing position, which happened anyway. 

Me and a new guy Luis did 3 straight rounds with Mike.  With our rolls it was a very technical battle with a lot more leg movement than I'm used to.  Mike swept me with a tornado sweep, which is a very difficult thing to accomplished.  He explained it to me after class that it's about creating momentum.  I had to deal with a lot of his guard retention.  Whenever I felt like I was getting close to a passing position a foot would be on my shoulder or he would threaten a choke with a deep collar grip.  I went for a north/south choke at one point but wasn't able to finish it and went to guillotine which led to him regaining guard.  At a different point he attempted a collar choke where he stepped over my head with a collar grip but he couldn't make it tight enough.

Office Hours Partner: Mike

He gave me some pointers on the north/south choke, that I didn't need to necessarily have it perfect from the start and I just need to connect my hands and then as I moved away it would eventually get under their chin.