July 7th 2015 - Gi Beginner

Theme & Techniques: Standing Guillotine Defense, Half Guard Underhook to Back or Recover Guard
Students: Zack, Harvey, Robert, Shane

Went to the Dr this morning to try to get my gout figured out.  He took some blood and we're going to see where my levels are before we change anything with my medication.

Small class today, and it went by fairly quickly.  I added one exercise to the warm-up.  We did the 90 degree turning exercise where you go from all fours bear crawl position to crab walk position around the circle. 

A couple minor things that I had to point out today for each technique:

• After grabbing the choking hand and grabbing over the shoulder move to the other side of the body
• As you take them down ensure you don't end up in half guard because they can still choke you 
• From half guard lead with the elbow instead of trying to get the underhook with the hand.  
• When getting to the knee when doing the back take don't wrap the leg so deep and move their knee out with your knee.
• Treat the guard recovery pretty much like the back half of recovering guard from side control.

Rolling: Half Guard Position (4 x 2 min), Free Rolling (4 min)
Rolled With: No One

Due to there being even partners for the class I didn't roll during this portion.  I saw some good things and did my best to give advice.  Pretty much from top my goal is to prevent the underhook and get them flat on their back.  The opposite from the bottom, I control the cross face hand and work to get the underhook.  One thing that most beginners take a while to get is to relax the legs a little bit.  If you just triangle your legs together and use your upper body, you're missing out on some possibilities and will usually get passed.

Office Hours Partner: Harvey, Zack

Zack and Harvey rolled with Robert and then rolled with me in half guard between rounds.  Zack was able to get a hold of my trapped leg foot from within his half guard.  He ended up getting the sweep out of it by holding my instep.  We played around with that a bit and tried to find some good counters like going to reverse mount and doing leg locks.  Not sure if anything will come of this, but I'll be sure to avoid it from the top.