December 17th 2016 - Open Mat

Open Mat
Rolled With: Henry, Mike, Patty, Craig, Nick, Mo
Game Plan: Deep Half and Z-Guard

It's been blizarding the last couple of days, but we still had a good group for open mat. Mostly because the tournament was cancelled that a few were planning to attend.

Henry: Great challenging roll like usual. We both had our moments of telling the other no when we went for one of our signature moves, like when he sees me setting up deep half or when he tried to guillotine me.  I made a terrible mistake when I was in side control and he made a kimura grip. I thought I could take his back from there but I was wrong and ignored Mike telling me to step over his head.

Mike: We went over the kimura defense and I realized I should have known better. I had a really good moment where I felt like things came together. I escaped to deep half, waiter swept, passed and moved right to NS choke, but his neck always seems too small for me to finish here.  He was able to catch me with a wrist lock.

Patty: He seems to be becoming a regular open mat partner.  There is a lot of back and forth between us and he's competent at defending my deep half. We ended up stalemated and quit rolling out of exhaustion.

Craig: We talked a bit about dealing with low posture in the guard.  We had a good roll, I've been trying to work on escaping side control as quickly as I can when I get there and was able to attempt a couple times here.  One thing that he's good at that most aren't is stiff arming to avoid be passed.

Nick: Started out getting caught in his rubber guard with my arm locked in but I kept his foot between my legs. I got out somehow, I was able to get to a top position for a while and attack a bit.  He eventually choked me from side control using his gi.

Mo: I played some Z guard with him and used it to help sweep. He had a few tricks up his sleeve too as he almost took my back. We discussed some of the lapel stuff after and Mike gave some advice with dealing with the crossface.

Thoughts:

I left open mat not feeling great about my progress. I don't know why though, I rolled relatively well.  I wonder if the feeling will ever go away that I'm not as good as I should be?  Probably not.