I got to class and immediately tried the Moura inverted guard and could not get inverted. Kept repositioning and still couldn't get it. I could not get upside to save my life. I tried with a couple of different people and it was an immense struggle to get upside down. One of the guys said he thought the other foot was supposed to go in the pit...and yes. I had been putting my wrong foot in the pit, which was squashing my ability to invert. Beautiful. I double-checked with James after class. It's funny that even though I take notes right after class that I had already screwed it up in my brain by the time I had put pen to paper. Anyway, mystery solved.
We worked arm-drags today, which is something that I've been trying to incorporate more into my game. I felt pretty good with the technique, although I have a difficult time wrapping my arm around the hip instead of the torso as I come up to take the back or pull them into me. There's a sweet arm-bar from there if you can't get them out of the turtle position.
Rolls with Blaine, Dennis, Antone, James and Ben. Blaine and I were more or less even, and then he got my back and went for some choke/crank that resulted in my arms being tied up and me being unable to tap. I didn't realize I was in trouble until he yanked back and sputtered out a garbled verbal tap that had the rest of the room's attention. He apologized though, as he didn't quite mean to slap it on that fast.
I decided to stop messing around with Dennis and get in his grill and try to pass. Our roll went much better than Wednesday. He kept trying for rolling back takes but wasn't quite in the right position. Pretty even roll, though he was doing a lot of experimenting.
I did relatively well against Antone's berimbolo. We haven't gone over defenses much, so I'm trying different things. Sometimes they result in him getting mount or back control, and sometimes he just gets side-control. Every once in awhile I can get it into a neutral position, which is a huge accomplishment for me. He did get to mount once or twice and top side a bunch. Good roll though.
Really, really fun roll with James. I decided not to pussyfoot around with him either, and went for passes, sweeps, and initiate without flailing. I tried in vain to get the Keenan sweep he showed us last week, so he stopped mid-roll to show me how to finish it. I don't remember much about the roll, except for one instance I was on top but had most of my back to him and I could tell he was setting up something dastardly. I went against my usual instincts and back-stepped to the other side. He wasn't expecting that and it devolved into a scramble. In general I was moving a lot, trying not to let him lock me down in a particular position. I think it's one of the best rolls I've had with him, purely on the basis of constant movement, positioning, etc.
Ben passed my guard and pretty much hung out in top side for most of the roll. I started off by passing his guard into mount but couldn't maintain long enough to get the paper cutter I was going for, ended up in guard which he passed. I chilled for the most part as he had me pretty well pinned. I should work harder to escape, but if a guy has over 40lb on me and has heavy top pressure I'd rather wait and capitalize on their next movement. I might be doing myself a disservice here, not sure.
No comments:
Post a Comment