805BJJ Class 68: 6 attacks from guard, rolling

Coach Greggo’s Tuesday morning class started with a brief warm up, and then we paired up and got to the six attack sequence from the guard:

  1. Kimura on the right arm
  2. Straight arm lock on the right arm
  3. Arm bar on the right arm
  4. Kimura on the left arm
  5. Triangle on the left side
  6. Arm bar on the left arm

I paired up with Phil, whose ankle is a little tight but it didn’t stop him from getting on the mat. We helped each other through the positions, and it went really well. We both improved greatly. Greggo broke it down to just focus on the first 3, then to just focus on #3 by itself. We worked on just that much for 45 minutes, then we got ready for battle.

My first roll was with Phil. I got on top side control pretty quickly, but he got a kimura grip on my lower arm that I had a lot of trouble escaping. I finally did by rotating around through north-south to the other side, but man that was tight. We had a pretty even, scrambly battle after that.

Next round I sat out. Filled my water bottle, fixed my hair by washing some of the gel out of it in the bathroom, and sucked on the Guu.

Coming back I tapped TJ, who recognized the fact that he’d just battled hard with Greggo and I’d sat out and rested for 5 minutes. I managed to escape all of his submission attempts except for one – an Americana from mount. Wish I’d worked harder from the bottom. I was fending him off a lot but finally gave up when he locked up the Americana. Tapping early is an energy saving mechanism too, I guess.

Next in line was coach Greggo. I spent a lot of time sitting in his open guard. I tried to be very patient and try stuff with him. Well, I ended up turtled and staving off the D’arce. I was able to shuck him off and get back to guard. Then I managed to survive the rest of the round.

Jen was next. I tried some half-hearted take downs and then turtled. Eventually we separated and restarted. I again turtled, then we scrambled and I got side control but with her holding my head. I tried the neck lever escape from that, but she started trying to sweep me that way, so I warned her to watch her neck because if she swept me, I’d be putting all my weight on her head and, since my arms were trapped there, I wouldn’t be able to stop it. So she let go and I let go and we reset. I hope I did the right thing there, rather than just sit in a head lock and wait for her to destroy me, or let her roll me and possibly break her neck.

Next was Pat, who’s a little monster of a black belt. We spent a long time not taking each other down, but every time I got him down he scrambled, got on top of me, passed my guard, mounted me, and submitted me. Beast! Turns out he’s friends with Jimmy Tang from UCLA!

After that was Dave. He had a bum shoulder so I stayed away from the shoulder locks. We had a typical scrambly roll. I ended up in mount, and I decided after a few seconds that I wasn’t going to work too hard to keep it. Dave started moving to get out of it and I caught his arm, then sat into the arm bar position, pried his hands apart and got the tap. It was very interesting because I got the submission immediately after my decision to not force my position on top.

Last was Brendan. We had fun with the knee takedown stuff. Especially entertaining was when I tried to grab his head and he ducked under and took me down, prompting me to say “Shit!”. Anyway, we had a good roll. Back and forth. With about 30 seconds left, I got him in a guillotine from closed guard. I was going for the kimura and the hip bump (I’ve gotten him with both of those before) but this time he was defending them pretty well so I grabbed his neck. I may have been cranking his neck a bit, so sorry Brendan. I’m not that good at the guillotine. With 20 seconds left in the round, I hurried to restart, but just turtled. Brendan was incredulous that I’d want to roll for 20 more seconds. I still had energy! I hadn’t been smashed hard under bigger guys the whole time, and when I was on bottom, I conserved energy pretty well, looking for an opportunity to explode and escape.

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