No Gi, No Grips

10/29

It's been awhile (couple of months?) since I've done a no gi class, so I decided I'd give it a whirl tonight. I forgot that James likes to use the no gi class for conditioning. We had a fairly rigorous warm-up (by our standards), and then worked open guard. Specifically, flaring out their elbow and latching on for straight arm-bars or transitioning to omoplatas. I had an uber flexible drilling partner, so it was difficult to tell if I was doing it right. The arm looked completely jacked up, so I must have been doing something right.

At the start of the roll I was once again flummoxed b/c there were no sleeve grips, no collar grips...nothing. I started with Savannah, which gave me a chance to ease into it a bit. I worked position and got a couple of arm-bars. I should have just stuck with transitioning through positions, but I wanted to see how my submission game was in no gi. Then Sol, who pretty much dominated in top side control for most of the match. I had one semi-legitimate escape, if that. Then a women who I haven't seen before but who is somewhat seasoned. I fared well and truly went for just positions instead of submissions. After that was Grant, who had top side for 90% of the match. I finally escaped when he went for something. He gave me props for continuing to fight for the escape, but he gets all the credit for keeping me down the entirety of the match. If it was point scoring he would have kicked my ass.

Last two rolls were with Julio and Jason. Just shoot me. Both of them were going for calf slicers. At one point Jason had my leg trapped and was falling backwards to further sink in whatever awfulness he was doing to my leg. I squawked out a rather loud verbal tap, b/c I was fearful for the health of my leg. Turned some heads, and I explained that everything was fine, just skerred. Some guys can kick my ass and I have little to no worry of injury. Other guys can kick my ass and I'm fearful everytime I roll that I'm not going to come out whole.