4/22 - Downtown

I honestly have no idea what we went over.

4/23 - Valley

I remember what we went over, but I also remember that it didn't seem like it would be very effective unless you were much more highly skilled than I am. The techniques were relayed to me from a seminar that the Valley guys attended over the weekend.

4/24 - Downtown

Our warm-up consisted of drills. Nullifying and passing spider guard from standing position. One was crowding and one was driving their feet into mat. Did the DLR spin throughs, etc.

The rest of the time we rolled. Haven't rolled for an hour straight in awhile, and it was a good surprise. Except that I was a little bit low energy and even sadder for me...I forgot to bring my normal drilling tshirt. That meant that I had to go back to work in the tshirt that I rolled in. Not ok.

I didn't feel like I did anything worthwhile in the rolls. It was one of those days. Rolled with Antone, Julio, Nate, Dennis, Jason (B), James, Kenny. Was in bottom side for the vast majority of the time and had little offer. Just trying to survive. At one point with Dennis I relaxed completely, which surprised him and he wasn't sure where to go from there. When he changed his position I was able to regain guard or at least not be in such a bad position. I realized early on that it wasn't going to be a stellar day, so I modified my expectations and rode it out. I'm not pleased by just trying to survive (instead of thrive), but there is the occasional day when that's really all you can do.

After my roll with James, he gave me some pointers on how to maintain guard. He noticed that I'm collapsing my legs together. Oftentimes when someone initiates a standing guard pass to one side or the other, I'm all the way over on my hip and my legs are together. I may be preventing them from passing toward my head, but there's nothing stopping them from backstepping and passing to backside side-control. I've noticed this happening a lot to me lately. He recommended being cognizant of where my legs are in relation to each other (not just to my opponent's body). He also gave me a pointer on if I'm on my side, to kick the bottom leg forward a bit so that my foot is past my hip line, put the ball of my foot on the ground and use it pivot as I rotate myself in the opposite direction to regain guard.

I'm looking forward to putting this into practice soon and to see if it helps.