Monday Morning

Back control escapes on the menu today. A little something new but should have been intuitive... if they start to take you back from turtle with a hook in and seatbelt control, pop that hook off with your top leg, pull their head into you as you walk around into side-control (same as if you fall to the choking hand side with both hooks). Always, always remember to keep the elbows down. I suspect that my elbows creep up while I'm in the midst of freeing hooks.

In order to win, you had to get to back or mount. Rolled with Jenny M (I use 'M' for MMA, I don't know her last name), Shelby, Sarah and Tyrone. 

Good roll with Jenny. I made it a point to try to keep my legs out of danger, even though submissions weren't allowed, just position. She got a sweep b/c I wasn't determined enough to stay on top. I did pass her guard and eventually got to her back, but time had run out so I wasn't able to hold it for 3sec.

Today was Shelby's first day and she was pretty timid. I started from a sortof sitting guard and then moved into half guard and told her to get to a mount position using whatever means necessary. She sat up tall on her knees, didn't use her hands at all and mostly just tried to crowd me with her legs. She turned her back to me quite a bit when she was in anything approaching a compromising position. I suspect she hasn't had much exposure to any form of grappling. She seemed a bit nervous about the whole thing. I was at a bit of a loss, b/c I've never had a new person approach grappling quite that way. I encouraged her to use one of her hands to block mine, get her butt closer to her heels and to always try to get her shoulders to face me. I showed her a quick and dirty knee cut pass to emphasize the low butt, using hands, facing someone, etc. It'll be interesting to see if she's still here in a month...she seemed quite uncertain about the whole thing.

Super fun roll with Sarah. I tried to do the DLR back-take and she put me in 50/50 instead. We had some good fun in there, with me trying to do the pass that Hannette showed and Sarah trying to take my back. We finally got it straightened out, trading sweeps back and forth. We ended up in some weird position coming out of the 50/50. I couldn't get her into back or mount though.

Fun roll with Tyrone. I got to his back in what I thought was a pretty slick manner. I had top side control and went for a kimura grip. I used that to rotate around his back and get back control. Twice I used the tight 93 guard to extend his leg, sweep into a split pass and then finished the pass. It was very nice to have some success with that.