March 9th 2017 - Gi All Levels

Theme & Techniques: Week #5 Double Leg, Mount: Cross Collar Choke, Upa
Partner: Jess

Some tips on the techniques of the week:

• Double Leg: It's so important to get down the penetration step and level change.  I feel like it's coming around for me now I just need to figure out when to do it.
• Cross Collar: Something that I noticed today that I hadn't previously was that Greg put his head to the mat before attempting any type of choking motion.  I think this may have costed me the submission in the past.
• Upa: One thing that still sticks with me is how Greg does this in live rolling.  Everything happens at once with trapping the arm and foot and bridging.  My upa improved exponentially after working on that.

Rolling: Mount, Free Rolling
Rolled With: Jess, Tim, Frank, Greg

Had a couple of opportunities to go to the shin across armbar/kimura position during the mount exchanges that I had.  I'm feeling better about the transition but still need to tighten it up.  From the bottom transitioned between my 3 main escapes of upa, ankle drag to deep half, or elbow escape.

Frank is improving on his grip fighting although he may have overemphasized on trying to control my arms too much where he should have probably been focusing on controlling my legs when trying to pass.  But he addressed any collar grab which is a huge improvement.  

Got to roll with Greg and had a good couple of exchanges.  There were a couple of times where I felt like I was getting somewhere but something would happen to turn the tables and everything would unravel and I'd be defending from the bottom of side control.  I was able to get to the z-guard and transfer the lapel but he went to reverse half guard and then came back and drove his hand through to get the under hook. 

Office Hours Partner: Greg

Greg asked if I would do some standup sparring with him and I couldn't have been happier.  We did two 3 minute rounds.  I had a few "almosts" with some drop seio nage attempts, double leg attempts, a decent single leg, and a cross guard pull but he figured out a way to stuff them all.  He also hit me with the takedown that he's been working on at least 3 times, which I may switch to in the near future.

I asked Greg about people hiding their arm when I was going for crucifix and he told me to just start going for their back and hopefully the arm will present itself again for crucifix.