Open Mat

10/31

James wasn't expecting much of a turnout b/c of Halloween, so he made tonight into an open mat. We had ~10 people, which was a pretty good showing, considering. It was great, as I had close to an hour of half of just rolling. People were pooping out right and left, but I had energy to burn. We were doing rounds over 8min long, which probably contributed to the drop-out rate. I've added a bagel as a mid-day snack and the carb shot has really helped my energy levels.

Rolled with Kelly (twice I think), Michael, Savannah, Ian, C (twice), James, Clayton, Nando. I tried rolling with Kelly's berimbolo attacks and it more or less worked, except that he was able to cinch it up a little bit tighter each time until I couldn't roll out of it anymore. The first roll he pretty much demolished me top side control, but in the second roll he seemed to ease up and let me work.

Michael was doing well in the first part of our roll and then petered out and left with a couple of minutes to go. He just gave me a couple of submissions which is unlike him. He said something about being sick yesterday.

Savannah has been doing better with guard passing, but hasn't been staying diligent with her posture and I was able to use that to my advantage tonight. I went for an arm-bar for the finish again, which I told myself I wasn't going to do with her. Catch and release.

Ian's been doing well and is getting ready for the tournament next weekend. He's going to be wearing my SYR, so I'll be there in spirit. :) I told him about leaving his far-side elbow flopping around when he's in reverse kesa gatame. I've been able to use that to my advantage with a lot of the guys recently. I'm excited for him to compete and wish I was going to be there to watch.

C and I did our best Miyao v. Cornelious impression in our first roll. It was 8min of messing around in 50/50 guard while he was going for a foot lock. It felt like an interesting chess match but probably would have been terribly uninteresting if anyone had been forced to watch it. He had my foot wrapped up but never went for the lock. Either I was doing a good job of protecting it or he wasn't quite sure how to finish. We didn't have those shenanigans the second time around. He kept trying to pass my guard from combat stance or standing and I kept trying to sweep him.

I felt like James and I had a pretty fun roll. One thing that I really enjoy about rolling with him is that he lets me work all different positions. At one point I inverted at exactly the right time to maintain guard, which felt good. I think he got me with one or two subs early on, but let me work for the latter half. He had me in a bad but not awful position with 10sec left, so I started counting down the time and of course he found a way to wrist lock me before the buzzer went off. Damn it.

Clayton worked top game to start and then seemed to let me work top game a bit. We were sortof-not-really-flow rolling.

I coerced Nando into rolling even though he was tired. Told him I'd take it easy, and we started off kindof flow rolling and then he jumped into full speed. And he got tuckered out pretty fast b/c he doesn't have his cardio back. I was trying to make sure I wasn't putting pressure on his knee even though he says that it's good to go. He was doing well, but just didn't have the juice. I told him to bebe more agua throughout the day.