Submission Escapes

James is not that keen on teaching submission escapes. His philosophy is that you shouldn't get there in the first place. I respect that approach, but the reality is quite different. 

I also get the feeling he takes it for granted that everyone knows basic submission escapes, but since he almost never touches on it, it's probably not a good assumption. I plan on teaching some escape basics as part of the fundamentals class, so it's good for me to get a refresher. 

Bow and arrow escape, both if they have the leg over and if they don't. Standing guillotine escape to side-control, arm-in and arm-out guillotines from guard. Triangle escape if your arm isn't across and if it is pulled across.

I know it's not his favorite to teach, but the techniques are immensely valuable.

Rolls with Sarah, Savannah, Corey, Dennis and Jason S after class. Sarah and I played footsie for awhile trying to come up on top after I back-stepped over her guard. I got a sortof bolo and her back. She prevented one of my jumping guard passes and collapsed my legs together to get the sweep. Fun roll, as usual.

Savannah has decided to start working her guard game. I'm going to pass her guard all day while I still can. I tried to kindof surf on her a bit by moving forward and then trying to back-step or knee cut through. She was doing a good job of not letting me knee get to the middle. I was almost set up for the Dern pass several times but I have a difficult time committing my weight forward and getting the underhook at the same time. We had a pretty good back and forth roll. 

Corey was doing a lot of good things instinctively, and I told him that after the roll. I was impressed with how he was reacting to what I was doing. I did catch and release subs to keep the roll moving along.

I was excited to roll with Dennis b/c we haven't rolled in awhile. We had a different roll than usual, but it still consisted of me trying to keep him from passing my open guard. I was doing a fairly good job of keeping him at bay for awhile. He eventually passed, I regained guard and near the end I almost pulled off a flying omoplata (trying to omoplata a standing opponent). I knew I had to commit hard to it, and I did but he was able to shrug it off. I'm not sure exactly how, but I probably didn't have a good grip on the arm.

After class I grabbed Jason for an untimed roll. I avoided his lapel guard, but I wasn't making much progress on passing. He eventually got the sweep b/c I committed too much weight forward. After that it was a lot of trying to defend submissions from bad bottom positions. He had a lot of setups (bow and arrow, arm-bars and at least one kimura) and was flowing well from one thing to the next. I'd work my way out of one bad spot and end up in another. He finally got an arm-bar b/c I had just worked my way out of a choke but left an arm hanging out too far and couldn't retrieve it. He commented that I did well to defend submissions, but there were a lot of instances where I was leaving arms dangling.