Monday Morning

Feeling better every day, but not 100%. Normal activities don't tire me out, but I still get pretty winded deep into a roll. I feel like that is improving each class, but I'm impatient. 

After a very light warm-up, James asked us what we wanted to work on. No one said anything for awhile, and I finally popped up with "Anything but KOB". After that, Sol asked for leg locks b/c apparently the Five tournaments allow most leg locks for purple belt and up. The idea of doing knee-bars right after Rachael bombed her knee was very unappealing. 

We did a knee-bar from the half-guard pass to backstep, a calf slicer from inside the DLR and a foot-lock from inside DLR. 

Rolled with Sarah, Joyce, Jason (b), Tyrone and Sol. Sarah and I had a good roll. I really worked to not use mass, although there were a couple of times where I was using my weight to finish a pass by pinning the legs. I had her back at one point but wasn't going all out for submissions. She got a nice deep half sweep.

Joyce has really come a long way technically in the ~3 weeks that I've been out. I focused even more on not using mass when rolling with her. She was working hard, but was doing a lot of stuff right. I transitioned through a lot of positions and was really happy when she used the elbow escape from mount that I went over on Saturday. 

Jason ran a clinic on me. I was attempting a pass and it immediately went to hell. He transitioned through a bunch of submissions and positions. I was defending but just barely keeping my head above water. He got to a mounted triangle which I was able to stave off for a bit. I think I made a mistake trying to take him to his side, as that made it worse and I had to tap. We reset and it was a lot more of me in bad spots.

Tyrone got some standing guard passes on me b/c he had grips on my legs that I couldn't break. When I was able to regain guard though, I threatened repeatedly with the arm-bar/omoplata/triangle trifecta. He was doing a good job of defending, but I eventually caught him with a triangle. We reset and I think he passed my guard again and I was in the midst of an inverted triangle when time was called.

Sol pretty much ran on a clinic on me too. It was also my fifth roll, and in addition to just breathing normally I'm still trying to get my cardio back. He didn't exert much top pressure except for once in side-control. He let me try to set things up from guard before shooting them down. I had a nice arm-wrap at one point but couldn't quite figure out what to do with it.

I'm really looking forward to getting my cardio back. Gassing out is not cool.