10/20 Training

Well I was out for about a week with various personal problems, but I felt really great back on the mats. My knees still are an issue, though thankfully not the inner knee. I'm waiting on some funds to purchase some new kneepads because these old ones are a year old and the padding is starting to feel like plaster.

Techniques were open guard. First was a spider guard counter where you reach around and cup their calves, posture upward to relieve pressure off your bicep and push their legs up to their head. You control them, place your knee over their pinned arm, strip their grips and look to pass. Second was off a bicep crusher attempt. Pin their opposite leg, strip grips, lift their non-pinned leg onto your shoulders and look to pass with the single underhook or the knee-over backward step pass. The other one was similar but you hit it off "grasshopper" guard or something I've never heard of. Sorta like spider guard. I don't know. Anyway, you end up in a position where you have one of their butterfly hooks in and the other leg is kinda free. You can drop your weight onto their hook, flatten it to the ground and pop it out. They are forced to establish half guard or get passed. You can then use your favorite half guard pass to get side control.

Drilling was rather easy. There were a bunch of lightweights around: Kati, Sergio, new guy Jeff, Michael, Michael's friend Romick(?), JC and Josh. Ran trains on everyone except Josh. JC went into defense mode and forced me into a rather ugly sit-up-and-flop into mount, armbarred a bunch of people, hit some nice Scissor sweeps (which are feeling smoother for me). Michael tried to cheat and started in a double underhook position, flung me over into turtle and ended up getting recomposed on and swept.

Rolling was me, Josh and Romick. This new dude has a crazy cartwheel-type pass that he surprised everyone with because it's so martial-arty but he didn't hit it at all on me or Josh. Dunno about the others. He kept trying to stand and go for it but got armbarred into oblivion from my guard, swept a couple times, ankle locked and passed with a nice single underhook toward the end. He defaulted to leg locks and got me twice with some ankle and knee locks. I have to be careful avoiding those, especially in no-gi without my usual grips.

Josh got me with some collar stuff, a triangle and a kneebar off that De La Riva-esque sweep I *almost* hit twice now off a combat base counter. Casey saw it and was awestruck which is cool. Too bad I get kneebarred off it. I will check into that and see if I can avoid feeding too much of my leg in so the knee isn't on the thigh upon completion.

So yeah, I felt rather great and was able to handle the other lightweights. Some things to work on:

1. Stay cognizant of weight distribution and mitigate getting swept.
2. Moar butterfly hook action and more Scissor sweep attempts.
3. Watch for leg locks and look for top position.
4. Posturing from guard. Avoiding submissions and passing from CLOSED guard.
5. Submissions from side control. I got a bunch but use none.
6. Half guard sweeps.
7. Back control escapes.

I'm going to need to test for my blue belt again at some point very very soon. I feel great with everything except back control escapes. I will get some of those in either tomorrow or within the next week and hopefully test within the next month. Even Coe, who never gives much credit at all, is telling me to test again.

Need to buy kneepads and a new, better cup for the boys.