Wed Morn

Side control escapes. Sarah is out for awhile due to a recent tattoo. Worked with Sol, which was great since his side control is stifling.  

Basic escapes, but I picked up on several details. Also it seems like either James has changed his philosophy on the underhook one or I've been remembering it wrong. In any case, I like the new way better.

KOTH rolls b/c we had a huge morning class (~20ppl). Person down starts in bottom side-control. Either person wins with a submission or back-control. 

Guy that comes over to me is new and looks MMA-ish. Half my age, twice my size, ripped physique. Rolled MMA-ish too. Definitely knew a fair amount about grappling, and seemed to know two submissions: guillotine and kimura. Suspicions confirmed: MMA guy. I don't mean that in a detrimental way, but every single person that I've rolled with that has primarily focused on MMA only seems to go for those two submissions. 

Anyway, I had him in my closed guard on a couple of occasions, but felt like I was stalling out b/c I couldn't get anything going. He did a fair job of breaking grips. I had a nice arm-wrap at one point, but wasn't able to do anything with it. Almost had a Frank Mir but no go. So I opened my guard, had him in my half guard and swept a couple of times. As I swept the first time, he got a strong kimura grip and used that to sweep me around. He had a helluva tight lock on it and was even trying to do some crazy banana split thing too with my legs. Somehow I got out of that jam. As I was trying my second split pass, I got caught in a guillotine and couldn't get out. I hate being the purple belt that taps to new guys in the door, but whatever. 

After that I was on the wall for a bit, then had a roll with Dennis. I escaped his side-control after quite a long while where he threatened quite a few chokes and arm locks. I felt like a rockstar just getting back to guard. As he broke my guard and did a stack pass (stacking one leg, pushing other down on the mat), my groin felt like it was stretching in a really uncomfortable and I tapped. I don't think I've ever tapped to a stack pass before, but with my hip flexor already being pissed at me I decided not to push it.