Monday Evening Passing

Passing the seated guard. Excellent. I can't pass for crap, so any work on passing is great for me.

All of the techniques I've done before in a private with James, and I've drilled them all on my own to some degree. I try to incorporate them but I don't commit to passing, which is one of the reasons why my passes don't work. 

Rolled with Sol and Jay, then drilled with Russ a couple of times. Rolled with Dennis after class. Dennis had top position quite a bit. He passed my guard a couple of times, but I was eventually able to re-guard. Russ wanted to work that double-under stack pass with me. Not a super huge fan of that pass, but I'm a good teammate.

Taking the dog and a friend to one of my favorite trails tomorrow. Weather should be perfect for a hike. There should be enough shade (at least for half of it) so that the dog doesn't get too hot.

Monday Morning KOB Escapes

I think this has been a record month of classes for me. Going to squeeze one more in tonight. I can't say that I've noticed any improvement in game, with possible exception of moving my hips better in a variety of situations.

KOB escapes this morning, which was awesome b/c that's something that I've been wanting to do for awhile. However, at least one of them was predicated on your opponent positioning their hands in a way that I have never done and have never seen anyone else do either. But I'm not going to quibble. 

Worked with Sarah, and felt pretty good about all of them. Sometimes I came up with more distance that I would have liked between myself and opponent, but whatever.

Rolled with Sarah, Tyrone, Sol and Kelly. Sarah and I had a great roll. I was going for a standing pass at one point and she used my momentum perfectly and dumped me right on my ass. I had a triangle position at one point but bailed b/c I didn't feel like trying to finish it. Good back and forth roll. I tried the baby bolo from combat stance several times but she kept my free leg at bay.

Tyrone started up in a passing position. The entire roll consisted of me harassing him from closed guard. I threatened numerous triangles and arm-bars. He was trying to open my guard by leaving his arms extended, which I'm going to take home with me 10/10. I made a concerted effort when playing open guard to try to keep him guessing and off balance.

Sol crushed my spirit with heavy side-control. I tried like hell not to concede the guard pass but he eventually got it. At one point one of my legs was trapped across his hips and the other one was out. I considered threatening a choke, but figured it wouldn't work. He then told me to try a choke to at least give myself the possibility of creating space for an escape. I had zero luck trying to escape his scarfhold.

Kelly and I got into a few odd positions. He's a flexible wrestler, and his hip movement is scary good. He bolo'd me at least twice. I tried to pull us into 50/50 and was bolo'd for my troubles.

Advanced Class

I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to drill, but that worked out ok. Drilled one of my favorites (taking the back from 93 guard) and Jason (b) showed me a great and simple counter if they get the whizzer. Simply pull their whizzer into your chest, dive your shoulder between their legs and take them across your body. I was really, really happy about picking that up as an option.

Drilled knee slice defense with James, and it helped me to figure out where I'm going wrong. I kept doing the wrong things when we rolled later, but I can put some energy into the drilling the right way and hope that it kicks in sooner or later.

With Russ I worked the DLR to RDLR and threw in the beginnings of the RDLR kiss of the dragon and baby bolo. I've come close to pulling off the dragon in rolls lately. 

With Manny I tried to do the not-quite-bolo if they're in a combat stance to a single leg but it wasn't working out for me. I think I was doing it too slow and the lack of momentum was hosing me.

Rolled with James, Jason and Russ. Russ wanted to go light, so we'd let the other work a position and then reset. He's been doing a lot of work on a double-under pass where he buries his head pretty close to the butt. No one is excited to drill that with him.

Jason crushed me a couple of times, once almost took the wind out of me as he traveled some distance before landing on my ribs. I had a pause for a couple of seconds but no damage taken. After the roll was over he said that I'm getting better at defending knee-bars...even though I really have no idea how. So...I guess that's good.

Had a pretty good roll with James. I snagged his far arm at one point when he was facing away from me and tried to use that to take the back. I didn't have a lot of success with it, and probably stayed with it longer than I should have.