January 9th 2016 - Kids & Open Mat

Kids Class
Technique: Upa Mount Escape
Rolling/Game: Mount Position

Mike led the warm-up and had them pretty warm by the time he was done.  It was a fairly small class of 5 so they were all able to roll together with 1 student on break.  I saw a lot of good stuff from back takes to armbars and some escapes to guard.

Open Mat
Rolled With: Jerad, Lucas, Caroline, Austin, Chris, Derek
Game Plan: Attacking the back

Jerad: It seems like I do a lot better against him when I'm fresh than if we roll closer to the end of open mat.  We had an epic roll.  I started out with the upper hand after passing guard but never felt like I was able to attempt a serious attack. Eventually he swept and tapped me out with an armbar. We discussed the x-pass for a while and how we were looking for the 2 main grips and not necessarily a certain position. We also talked about not accepting a position like side control just to get to a position that you know. An interesting concept that I'll ponder on.

Lucas: A friend of Caroline's and pretty good wrestler. I had a tough time trying to move him around.  Probably one of the most impressive things was when I sunk in an RNC he was able to bridge up and put my head on the floor and kind of crank my neck until I let go.  Haven't experienced that escape before.  After we rolled I showed him some basics of guard passing.

Caroline: It's been a while since we rolled and she's improved.  There were a couple of times where I had set up a sub but she was able to position just enough to prevent it.

Austin: It's probably been months since I rolled with him which is probably the last time he shaved his beard ;).  He expressed that he was ready to come back on a regular basis.

Chris: This week he wanted to work on escaping side control.  We only drilled a few techniques focusing on how to bridge and make space and then getting an underhook toward the end.

Derek: Finished off the session with a pretty tough roll.  Derek wrestled for many years and it shows.  I was able to get to closed guard and tried to work from there but had a tough time trying to sweep, armbar or omoplata. I was also playing cautiously because I didn't want to end up on the bottom of a bad position.  It makes me want to drill my cross guard even more though. We ended up stalemated after a while and decided to call it a day.