August 28th 2015 - Gi All Levels

Theme & Techniques: Standing Guillotine Defense Against Wall to Neck Crank, Kneeling Guard Break, Double Under Pass
Partner: Morgan

I did a couple quick reps on uchi mata before class started with Dave.  I've got to actively seek someone every class.  Conan had us do some different warm-ups like last week with partner situps, guard standing and lifting, and monkey boy.  I felt sorry for Morgan and did the situps with Zac instead.

Morgan was much better with the guillotine escape than Tuesday.  He didn't let up with his posture at all.  We played around a little bit with hand fighting or riding up the leg on the closed guard break.  At the end of the drilling portion, Conan went over some double under defenses that I think everyone appreciated.

Rolling: Closed Guard (4 x 4 min), Free Rolling (4 min)
Rolled With: Morgan, Ethan, Dave

Good training today.  I resorted to the standing guard break after the kneeling would fail, but still wanted to try it.  From the bottom, I played cross guard or 2 on 1 pretty successfully.  I ended up hitting some hip bump sweeps in transitions where my cross guard failed as they struggled to remove the cross grip, this is new thing for this game.

Morgan's long legs are something that I have to deal with.  Just try to keep my elbows in.  I showed him later that he may have some success with pulling a hand across and looking to take the back or sweep. 

Ethan was pretty tough, this was the first time I rolled with him so I didn't know what to expect.  He was pretty decent at finding the moment to scramble just when he was about to be put on his back.  I had to work hard to stay ahead of him a couple times to complete a sweep.  He was able to catch me in a single leg one of the times.

Had a good free roll with Dave.  Afterward we went over some guard passing starting with toreando and then leg drag.  Then I found out he had not done an armdrag before so we worked for a while on that.  We did it from standing and then from butterfly guard and then came back to the leg drag.  Hopefully not too much info for one day.

Office Hours Partner: Morgan, Zac

Morgan and I rolled a couple times and I went pretty light and tried to flow as much as possible. 

Zac wanted to cover the north/south choke as I have become the goto guy for that.  He seemed to like how it worked and setups and follow ups that I use.  We also talked about back mount and not putting the top hook in if the bottom hook is out.  I showed him using the butterfly hook to roll them away to regain that hook.

I saw the video below earlier today and was really surprised at how Marcelo Garcia uses his hooks differently and sometimes not at all.  His upper body control and harness are so strong and impressive.  This video reinforces my thinking of the standard hooks for back mount not being as important as I thought.  The legs still do stuff and that's what I need to investigate but I don't necessarily have to have both hooks in all the time to have a successful back attack game.