Monday 8/9/2010

No Kettlebells I was caught at work so was a little late.
BJJ - John covered some basic closed guard sweeps (scissors sweep - hip bump sweep, Fima sweep)
I did three purple belt sets Dave O first who is playing hard and pretty well right now.  I concede him some advantageous positions and he maintains them for a bit. he still can't stop the butterfly sweep, very well, but, if I let him get to half guard he was able to make me bail to a turtle. He tried to wrap the tail of his jacket around my neck to go for a choke. He was just across my face and irritated me quite a bit. I reversed him, then passed and kee in the belly and mount. The set ended here.

I had Mike B. next - He stood and I went De la Riva and kept him bent over and swept him. I stayed in side control for awhile before he regained his guard  and I passed again. His defense from the position was solid, but he was unable to reverse me. He is refusing to go for a triangle, so I forced the one in and one out position and passed from there.

Last set was with Eric S. He pulled to work his cross spider position.  We are both refamiliarizing ourselves with the position. He went for a few things but, i was able to get him to some bad spots and pass, but was unable to advance my position.

Judo. The warmups went well and quickly. They are understanding and doing better at the drills we are doing. Still waiting for the techniques to show up in ne waza more, but I am starting to see it.

We did a lot of structured work recently so i let everyone work on Tokui Waza. I did some left sided work with Eric. I did left Ouchi Gari, Kouchi Gari and Osoto Gari. I also did soe Seoi Nage as a prelude to working on the drop seoi to the left side, which my body finds horrifying and refuses to do.  I threw the Seoi Nage some and it felt surprisingly good. Old friend and training partner, Mike Bowman came to class. He seems to be committed to starting back with us. Hopefully he will stick it out. He worked with Eric a bit. Need to make sure he doesn't throw himself in too deep too soon, as i want him to build up a bit first.
We did 3-4 sets of randori and called it a night for stand up.

I covered switching to the belly down armlock from the mount when the Uke throws you off. There was a lot more trouble with this technique than I expected. This seems quite easy to me, but most people couldn't/wouldn't keep the arm tight and high enough on the chest. We will have to revisit it. Part of it is the feel for how an armlock is applied properly, as with the similar troubles we had applying chokes. So as the familiarity increases I think the techniques will improve. If you understand the proper application of the choke or armlock, the different techniques are just changes in details. When you don't, the details often end up misapplied.

We did a few sets of Ne Waza and called it a night.