James was back, and we had a big-ish class. Around 13 or so people. I wasn't feeling exactly perky as a result of the three beers I had the night before while watching the Hawks pummel Denver. I'm a lightweight when it comes to alcohol. I drank a lot of water well before class, but the headache hit after I was already on my way to class and without advil. It wasn't a bad one, but I was off my game.
Sarah was there, so we partnered up for drilling. Today was passes, all of which were ones that James had covered in our private lesson from the week before. That was perfect, as I was just assimilating detail with my addled brain and not taking in something entirely new.
Rolls with Sarah, Jason (b), Julio, Ryan and Xavier. Sarah had a good day against me. Passed my guard and dumped me over for several sweeps. Even if I had been feeling better she still would have done well. I did get one sweep. I don't remember exactly how, but it was one of those things where I was operating on implementing a concept instead of trying to execute a specific technique.
Jason dominated our roll for the most part. Quickly got a sweep, passed my guard and finished with a triangle. We reset, and he was mid-way through passing my guard again. The clouds parted, a ray of light hit his arm and I realized there was an arm-bar for the taking, so I took it. I slapped it on, and he tapped immediately. I was incredulous that I got it, b/c it was completely unplanned. We reset again and I'm pretty sure he was on his way to getting on top again when time ran out.
Julio sat back in my guard and was letting me work the initial entry to various positions and then shooting them down. I tried a scissor sweep (he smashed it down), arm-drag (he pulled me back around into guard), arm-bars (shrugged out of them), triangle (postured up and passed). I feel like I barely challenged him.
I went for a couple of subs on Ryan but caught myself in time to not finish them. I let him work from some different positions, including inside my guard and top side-control.
Xavier is visiting from Florida. He came to several classes last week and will be here until Wednesday. He's a short, compact guy and I was curious to see what his game was like. No surprise, he went straight into butterfly guard. I eventually got the pass and then back-mount. I tried to work some chokes but his defense was pretty good. He didn't seem to be doing anything to get out of the position though and at that point I was backed up to the wall so we were stuck. He had a two-on-one grip on my right arm and kept trying to pull it lower. I thought, is this guy going to straight arm-bar me from this position? I let it play out a bit, and sure enough, that's exactly what he was attempting. He came pretty close, but I was able to get a bend in my arm and retrieve it. I told him after the roll that it was a pretty slick set-up.
2 comments:
You're going to have to show me that clouds-parting and ray-of-light trick.
Not every submission that I land is planned, but this one seemed especially odd in its spontaneity but I can't quite put my finger on why. I don't know if it's b/c it was against Jason who usually kicks my ass or if it was b/c I executed something within a very short window of opportunity. Maybe a bit of both. That's probably why it felt so otherworldly, b/c it seemed effortless.
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