July 11th 2015 - Kids & Open Mat

Kids Class
Technique: O-Soto Gari, O-Goshi
Rolling/Game: Sumo

I helped teach with both classes today.  Classes have been somewhat small lately probably due to summer vacations.  My boys have been doing great lately and I think this is partly due to us not having them work together as much.  They can get pretty silly when they're partners at times.  The throws went pretty well, I've seen quite a few of the kids do well with the o-soto gari.  The other throw is going to need a lot more work though.  There were some good fights in Sumo.  With the kids more than the adults they seem to try the throws that they've learned over and over again instead of trying to prevent being thrown like I've seen many adults do. 

Open Mat
Rolled With: Jerad, Roland, Bauer, Henry, Jeff, Ben
Game Plan: Butterfly guard, Baseball Bat Choke

Jerad: I didn't feel like I mounted much of an offense against Jerad today.  I ended up on the bottom and defended armlock and choke one after the other.  I was able to recover guard a few times.  He submitted me with an armlock off of a mounted triangle I think.  He complimented me on my defense but I felt pretty worn out after all that.

Roland: Had a few good rolls with him.  He mentioned after open mat that he was looking to getting back into MMA and I offered to help him with half guard the next times we worked together. 

Bauer: I practiced the turtle choke that I learned from Zack yesterday with him before we started rolling, I think Bauer enjoyed it as well.  We had some wars today.  He dominated me in the first roll and squashed me in bottom half guard.  I just couldn't get anything going.  Eventually he was able to mount and submit me with an americana.  On our next rolls I decided to avoid half guard and played more full and butterfly instead.  I had a pretty cool combination of omoplata to triangle back to omoplata and flower sweep attempt but ended up back in full guard where we started.  I attacked a spiral armbar from mount at one point but even though I thought I got my foot position right he was still able to come up into it. 

Henry: He was just as difficult to deal with as always.  We went no-gi and had quite a battle.  I defended some darce and bread cutter type chokes and was pretty much on the bottom the whole time.  There was a point that I was in butterfly guard and swept but he turned it into a guillotine which really surprised me, I think part of my problem was that I went to my back instead of following up on the sweep. 

Jeff: He was returning after having a broken thumb for the past few months.  After we rolled a few times we got on the subject of guard passing and how to start a roll.  I went over my usual spiel of the 3 main guard passes that I use (toreando, knee slide, and leg drag), the leg drag seemed completely new to him but he learned it pretty quickly. 

Ben: I joked that since I was tired that he was going to get a passive easy going Josh.  He said that seemed insulting so then I said I going to be former Marine Killer Josh instead.  That roll ended pretty quickly.  Our second roll lasted a little longer and I mostly fought from the bottom.