Advanced Class

Today was the first advanced class (blue belt four stripes and up) and it was awesome. We did 5min rounds of drilling your choice. Then it was the other person's turn. Then rotate to someone else and repeat. We did this so that everyone had 5 rounds of drilling. I worked mainly on the DLR sweeps that James and I went over last month. I am really, really dodgy on one of them, and I think it's because I try to force it sub-optimal situations. I also don't have the motion or timing down at all with my legs. I discovered that I really need to pull their weight on top of me, and if they aren't expecting it and let their weight come too far forward, I might be able to get a tomoe nage type sweep out of it. I also worked the back-take, which I'm much more proficient. Did one round of the half guard sweep we worked yesterday and that went well except that I wasn't extending their leg. D'oh!

After drilling, we did our usual 5min rolls. I started with Jason (p), then Sol, Russ and James. I had one of my better rolls with Jason, although he may have been taking it easier on me than normal. He got a choke from top side fairly quickly, but seemed to let me work a bit after that.

Sol got in top side and was going for some dirty gi choke but I eventually worked myself back into guard.

Russ wanted to flow roll, and I guess we kinda sorta flow rolled. But not really. It was an aggressive type of flow. :p

James seemed to be working some new techniques. I did have a nice escape at one point that immediately led into a wrist-lock, so my success was pretty short-lived. I was doing a decent job of not getting into a truly awful positions, and I was really happy with how I moved and transitioned. I could tell that he was going for points in the last 30sec and I was able to prevent the sweep. Great roll, and great class overall. Everyone loved it.