Had a meeting run over at work, so I missed the warmup–a day after Coach Frank posted a meme about people who’s best move is escaping warmups. 🙂

I did make it in time for some RDLR single leg drills. Better, but still not very coordinated.

Technique–the objective is to keep the enemy from rocking backwards
  1. Grab same side lapel and pull towards you while…
  2. Kicking the locked foot through the grip
  3. Use hand on the side with the foot on hip to remove the foot from the hip
  4. Scoot out, then sit on that foot
  5. Sit up to mount/KoB, depending on which shoulder/elbow enemy was using to trap the foot

Rolling:

We went five 5-minute rounds. First up for me was Dan the Man. I really like rolling with Dan–his style is the most contradictory to mine, at least if you discount brown belts and up. He’s tall and lanky (~150 lbs), and really technical. I try to be as technical as possible when rolling with him instead of relying on weight and power. Hopefully this will help me to learn his game better. We started with me (again) just trying to pass guard. I made it to side control and immediately moved to KoB, but without all the weight. I have limited attacks anyway, and without weight I can’t even start to set those up, so I focused on trying to travel. The result was me turtled up with Dan attacking. At one point he removed my lapel from my belt, so I was really on the lookout for a choke coming, but he didn’t do anything with it. He rode me for a long time and ended up attempting a bow and arrow, which I was able to defend.

Next up was Ana-conda. Another lighter and more technical opponent. Let her work some, and I did the KoB rotation successfully. Here I definitely focused on changing positions as much as possible–again, it’s still hard for me to attack without throwing weight on other people. Her mount is getting really good. Without muscle, I have a tough time escaping it. She actually inspired me to try some stuff she was doing later with Ed. These rolls are good for me because they force me to rely on technique only.

From here out, it was going against guys who have a more similar style to mine.

Good Ol’ Ed was my third round.  I spent a lot of time with him in my full guard and attempted a cross-collar choke (now I know why it failed) and a triangle. This time, I was able to prevent him from passing to side control because I bailed on the triangle early and instead tried to get him in the RLDR position so I could go for the sweep. He recognized it and I wasn’t able to set up. But I realized that I was 75% there already, and even if I couldn’t get him to his back, I could still force a scramble for position. I’d have the advantage since I’d know when it was coming. It worked, and I was able to work towards a kimura before we ran out of time.

Roll 4 was Norm. From the get-go, I could see the triangle coming. It was like I was getting sucked into a black hole in slow motion. Tried and tried to avoid it, then defended early. He still got it. Norm. We restarted and he worked me through a few positions. Ended up trying a choke with me on bottom. I was able to bridge up and defend, but it was crazy uncomfortable. I think he cracked my neck about 5 different ways, which actually felt pretty good!

One more round with Ed. This time we went without Gi on the top. Changes the equation quite a bit, especially because I spent a lot of time in this roll with his back. Wished we’d had the gi so I could shoot for the bow and arrow since I’ve been having trouble with the rear naked choke. Oddly, the RNC was much more available all of a sudden. I almost finished it. Almost. This time I gave up on it before I got too tired and moved to mount and practiced grapevining him to flatten him out ala Ana-conda. This was a really good roll for me, but I felt bad for him. He’s got some nasty cauliflower ear going and I could tell he was favoring that the whole time–one reason the rear naked choke was so open for me.