Rolling Back Takes

5/15 - Downtown

The three days off was a good life choice. Came back to class feeling mentally flushed out and ready to enjoy jiu jitsu again.

We did rolling back takes, which was pretty new to me. I've only practiced the technique from quarter guard before. I did fairly well, especially once I was able to figure out which direction to go each time.

I tried to write out the details for each positional take but I was getting my Rs and Ls mixed up. There's a lot of R/L rotation on these, and I just don't know them well enough to describe them yet. However, I will make a note of some details.

1. When doing a rolling back take, you must have the more shallow of the shins for the legs that are locked up. Specifically, you want your ankle to be in their kneepit. If your ankle is extended past their foot, even if you are initiating you are going to lose that positional battle.

2. Step down on your own ankle to give you momentum. There's a big difference between trying to windmill around to get momentum and simply stepping on your ankle to push your leg down (and subsequently theirs).

3. If you want to try to stop a rolling back take, get your back as flat as possible on the mat and extend both of your arms out like you're finishing a breakfall.

Rolled with Antone, Dennis, Kevin and Sol. Had a fun roll with Antone...lots of inversion. Tried to keep everything tight. Could tell that he was playing around. Roll with Dennis was good. He held top position most of the time, but I was able to regain guard and almost had a back mount at one point. Kevin tapped me with an arm-bar from technical mount. He was fishing for a kimura and I thought I escaped out of it fairly well but not so much. And something possessed me to try to roll out of the armbar the wrong way. Not successful. Sol was giving me a fair amount of top pressure from side-control...I tried to be diligent with frames.

I've been trying a bit harder to keep my legs from getting collapsed when I'm in guard but not having a lot of luck.

I've also been pondering making a run at the 2014 Worlds. It's never too soon...