September 18th 2015 - Gi All Levels

Theme & Techniques: Koshi Guruma, Open Guard
Partner: Craig

My good friend Craig,  joined us this morning and is trying to make it a regular thing.  He and I have trained together for a long time.  He was there when I went to my first TKD school and we've been friends since then.  In fact I owe him for getting me into Jiu-Jitsu because when I was teaching Hapkido he was interested in ground fighting and we would try our best to learn the positions and stuff.  He also came with me to visit Conan's Jiu-Jitsu class for the first time.  We still get together pretty often to roll.

Conan took me by surprise and started teaching open guard rather than the triangle.  I'm kind of embarrassed that it took me off guard when he started teaching something different.  I know that if I were teaching I would want to be able to switch things up a little bit.

The open guard was with one spider and a collar grip.  We worked on recovering guard and sweeping with a similar technique to the lasso sweep.  Unfortunately Craig has been struggling with a leg injury and it flared up during drilling, so he sat out for the rest of the class.  Hopefully he'll be healthy back at LBJJC soon.

Rolling: Open Guard (4 x 4 min), Free Rolling
Rolled With: Conan, Josh, Dave

Had some good rolling.  I felt pretty good about maintaining guard, but wasn't able to attack much from the position.  I did hit a couple of sweeps, or was able to come up to my knees to attack a single leg.  With Josh, I fell into a triangle but I gave him some trouble with my posture.  I showed him some things to do after the roll.


Office Hours Partner: Conan

Rolling with Conan was tough.  He kept me at bay with his new arm positioning for guard retention.  He's been experimenting with it and it seems very effective. I've had some success with it myself although I don't have as many contingency plans as Conan.  I feel like I've learned quite a bit from Conan lately with guard retention and recovery and it's made a difference in my rolling.  I'm definitely not on a plateau at the moment.