March 21st 2017 - No Gi All Levels

Theme & Techniques: Escape from Back Mount & Granby from Turtle
Partner: Ben

We worked on 2 things that I feel like I'm relatively good at.  Escaping back mount had a few different details for no gi.  Since we can't stiff arm the leg, Greg had us do a kind of a half guard on the leg that we didn't smash to the floor.  Then we would use our knee and foot to slowly pry it out once we were in a good upper body position to move to side control. 

I tried to give Ben all of my tricks for doing the granby roll as he started out rolling forward a little too much.  Things like try to kiss your knee, try to get the back of your shoulder on the floor as quickly as possible, try to fold under yourself.  I feel like he improved on this a lot today.

Rolling: 8 Minute Escapes
Rolled With: Greg

We did the 8 minute drill and I was ecstatic that Greg asked me to be his partner.  I started on defense and was actually able to escape a few times from each position except for back mount.  From turtle the first time I was able to use the granby roll to get back to guard.   

Attacking was a different story, I didn't submit him although I was able to go from turtle to side control once.  I did take note of some of Greg's escapes from mount, he's great at getting his knee in for SLX.  Mount was where I felt like I couldn't do anything to him.  Regardless, I feel pretty good about my performance and he told me that did a good job.

Office Hours Partner: Mike

We discussed some half guard kimura stuff and we had a good discussion on positives and negatives from transitioning shin across from turtle.  He had some good arguments to avoid the position and won me over in the end. 

We had a couple of good rolls that were fast paced.   I ran into my waiter sweep then attacked his standing leg to attempt an ankle lock again that he was able to roll out of.  We discussed this after and I have some things to think about.  He had a great idea of an alternate leg position that I should use while doing this to prevent the roll.  We also discussed the truck and who is winning or in control of the truck by who is closer to the opponent's knee.