July 20th 2015 - Gi Advanced & Beginner

Advanced
Theme & Techniques: Rolling Back Take
Partner: Jordan, Jerad

This will be my last evening class for a while so I figured I'd do both of them to finish off my tough week of training.  Greg took my suggestion from earlier in the day to heart and we worked on some back take stuff.  I agree with him that doing the rolling back take from quarter guard is a great way to learn it.  It's the way I have the most success with using it during rolling anyway. 

I focused mainly on grabbing the foot during the roll and the switching of grips.  Sometimes I'm a bit lazy and don't replace the hip grips as efficiently as I think I should. 

Rolling: Quarter Guard Position (4 x 2 min), Free Rolling (3 x 4 min)
Rolled With: Jerad, Henry, Alejandro, Gina, Jordan

Rolling starting from quarter guard was difficult.  Sometimes when we start from an advantageous position I feel a little guilt that I have the upper hand and give the other person the first move.  This will get me into trouble.  If I got there during the course of a roll I feel like I'll fight harder to keep the position.  Regardless I had some success even attempting the rolling back take a few times.  From the bottom, I had some success with getting to deep half.

I got to roll with our new brown belt, Alejandro for the first time.  It was very interesting.  I didn't feel much resistance to start with, he more like led me down a path kind of making me put myself into trouble.  I was able to go to deep half a couple times to escape.  I attempted a sweep and thought I might succeed but he was able to beat my grip and put me into a triangle.  The other thing that I noticed was that he controlled my knee quite a bit in side control, instead of going for the underhook.  I hope to roll with him more in the future.

Beginner
Theme & Techniques: Head Lock Escape to Armbar, Turtle Turnover to Side Mount & Back Mount
Partner: Helped teach

A couple of tips for the techinques:

• When freeing the elbow it's okay to use your legs multiple times, also move the shoulder away underneath you instead of just spinning in place.
• For the turn over most students didn't pull tight and down to the hip once they got the grip across the belly.  It's so important.
• When going for backmount make sure you only roll a little bit to get the bottom hook in and then roll back to that side.  The underhook side should be the up side in back mount.

Rolling: Turtle Position (4 x 2 min)
Rolled With: Henry, Brian (Firefighter), Phil

My back attacks are feeling pretty good lately.  I feel like the concept of the bottom hook being the most important has improved my back mount exponentially lately. 

Greg worked with me a bit on attacking the turtle by getting to the crotch lock and roll as Ryan Hall teaches by grabbing the far ankle and then getting my hook in and then maneuvering their other leg into a hook.