December 26th 2015 - Open Mat

Open Mat
Rolled With: James, Adam, Chris, Mo, Henry, Jerad
Game Plan: Hunt kimuras, Finishing from Mount

Had almost a 3 hour long session today and I needed it after Christmas festivities. A couple notable things happened.  I was able to complete the half guard kimura with a step over that Mike covered Wednesday.  I also submitted someone with the crucifix omoplata that I wasn't able to complete in the tournament and have been working on finishing.

James: We had about a 20 minute roll to start open mat off.  I had a hard time sweeping him but was able to retain guard for the majority of our match. When I was able to take the back he was able to scramble out of it rather quickly.

Adam:  I think confidence plays a big role in how I do against Adam, that or is amazing wrestling ability. Everytime I try to escape side control he puts the butcher on me and pulls me back down again. I was able to keep him from submitting me for a while but it's pretty miserable down there. In the future I need to fight harder to keep guard rather than waiting until side control to fight harder.  I also need to trust my techniques and just go for them too often I think I'm going to fail at something so I only half ass it.

Chris: He just wanted to work on escaping mount so I was happy to oblige.  At first I was catching him with ezekiels because he kept putting his arms down to push my hips. Then we went over some basic defense stuff and it continued in cycles from there.  I'd attack something and succeed and then show him a defense or an opening and then when he understood it I would move on to something else. I respect him for willingly taking a crappy position in order to get better. Most guys who have trained as long as him would just want to roll during open mat.

Mo: We had kind of a interesting roll where we fought for position. Once he was close deep half guard I saw an opportunity for him so we stopped and worked on that position for a while. He's also having trouble with the sweep, so I showed some tricks to get around people attempting to triangle. people attempting to triangle. This was a part of deep half guard that I struggled with as well.

Henry: He was stalking me like a tiger after I finished rolling with Mo. It's been a while since we rolled and it was really challenging mentally and physically. We spent a lot of time and half guard and I was happy that I could keep him from standing up by using my knee shield on his hip bone. There was a point when he attacked me a lot from turtle and back mount and it to everything I had to defend all of the attacks he was throwing at me.

Jerad: I have been looking forward to rolling with Jerad.  I don't think we've rolled for at least 2 months. I was curious to see how well I would do with all of the training that I've been doing. It started out well but we got to a point where he was shutting me down at every turn. He gave me some advice on turning my body instead of lifting my head to defend chokes from mount, as he is catching me with mounted triangle most of the time.