Open Mat

There's a local tournament in which we have kids competing, so James wasn't leading class today. Instead, we had an open mat, courtesy of Antone. Before class, I watched Xande's berimbolo defense over and over so that I would have at least some answer for it. There's enough people doing it and I'm so bad at allowing the DLR hook that I'm basically begging to be bolo'd. Anyway, I asked Antone to bolo me a couple of times so that I could work on it. Watching a video and putting it into practice are two waaaaaaay different things, but I got the gist of it.

Had one roll with Aaron, a couple with Antone and Jay, and a bunch with Ian and Jason (p). No warm-ups, just right into flow rolling and then gradually full-speed rolling. My flow roll with Jason was nice, as he was allowing me to work a bit and he wasn't going non-stop for submissions. During one of our non-flow rolls I had an inverted triangle on him and he ended up choking me with a gi choke while he was turned away from me. Sad panda. Our last roll consisted of him in top side control, putting unbelievable pressure on my sternum. He's a big guy, probably close to 200lb. He usually feels heavy, but this was especially heavy pressure. He asked me mid-way through "Is the pressure good?" and I managed to choke out "Yes, it sucks". He mentioned it after class too, so clearly it's some new fangled thing he's working on. Meh. After he finally tapped me with something, we restarted with less than a minute left in the round. I tried to get him in open guard, but he shrugged it off like he usually does and right back to top side-control. He made a comment like "what are you doing?"...which is exactly what I was thinking. I did kindof just give up on that guard b/c after being under his side-control for most of the round my will to fight had been pretty well squelched.

One of my rolls with Antone was really pretty fun, as I was trying to not get caught in the same mistakes that I often make against him. Either he was letting me work or I did especially well in that roll. He didn't bolo me during any of our rolls, so I couldn't try my shiny new defense.

My rolls with Jay were frustrating as he was moving like a glacier during his passes, but they were all successful. I don't think I got top position on him once.

Ian and I had a feisty rolls. I was proud of my arm-bar defense. He had top position and went for the arm-bar, but I was able to sidle up next him and escape. I did better in our first couple of rolls, as I had his back and was dominating position. The latter half of the rolls he came right at me and I struggled to keep him from passing.

I tried to roll smooth with Aaron and let him work a bit. I didn't go for any submissions and focused on using my legs more than my arms.

Mid-way through class, a woman came in, Patience, who is interested in doing jiu jitsu. She made an interesting comment as I was chatting with her after class (no one else seemed to know what to do with a new person). I initially asked her if she was interesting in trying jiu jitsu, and she said that she wasn't going to try jiu jitsu, but that she was going to do jiu jitsu. Regardless of what the future holds for her, I applaud her bravado.