805BJJ Class 69: nogi attacks from turtle: roll to top, hip twist back take, leg grab and hip over; rolling

We had three black belts on the mat this Thursday morning – Mark, Christian, and Greggo. Greggo got us running, shrimping, and rolling to warm up. Mark intervened to have us do diving break falls on the crash pad, focusing on using our pinky to make the outer wheel even on the crash pad dive. I did kind of okay.

Then we got together, bowed in, and got a lecture about the 2-foot wide tatami walk vs. the 3-foot wide bridge over a 500ft drop. It’s all in your head.

The first technique of the day was when you turtle and your opponent locks his hands under you from north-south. Grab the hands and roll them over on their shoulder, then switch your hips back the other way and secure side control. I paired up with Brandon Sherman. He kept grabbing me pretty strongly, making it difficult to secure side control at the end.

The next technique was for when they don’t clasp their hands together but instead do the Lego grip. Then you can hip out while raising your outer elbow high (to clear their arm on the exit side), step through with your far leg while also sticking your head through, then rotate your hips back quickly to attack them from the side.

The third attack from turtle was for when they keep their knees too close in front of you. Grab their leg, hug it close to your chest, and push them down over that leg. Then plant your forehead on the mat, tripod up on your toes, and jump your body across theirs into side control. It’s best if you release your grip while your body is in the air, otherwise they can stick you with a strong grip (as Brandon demonstrated to me).

Coach Mark then told us that every warm up will end with us learning to balance on our heads. I tried and I fell to my feet several times, then once I almost fell forward but bent my neck to roll, only I didn’t roll! I collapsed onto my neck before rolling. Oops. Didn’t hurt that bad right away, but we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

And then we rolled. I started vs. Brandon Sherman. He did the arm drag on me and passed to side control, while whacking my sore ear, but I maneuvered and got a knee in, then shifted to turtle. He maneuvered to try to set something up, but I rotated around and eventually got an elbow to my left eye. Actually right under my eye. Brandon joked that it was right where he was aiming. I joked that it was good Krav Maga. After that we went back to it, I used turtle to take his back (using the second move of the day) and rode him to mount. I tried to pull off an arm bar but he slipped out and got on top before the round ended.

Next round I got called out by Desi and we rolled in the back room. She’s very small and soft, and I got her in side control after fiddling with her legs a bit. She kept getting the knee shield in but eventually I got past it. She was guarding her arms pretty well but I managed to sink in an anaconda choke and mount her for the tap. Next time I pulled guard and immediately swept her, got to side control and got the same choke as before, but I didn’t cinch it up. I let it go and basically let her recover guard. Then I just maintained good posture as she tried triangles and arm bars and hip bump sweeps. I rebuffed them all, and the round ended. She said I did a good job.

Then back on the main mat, I paired up with Dave, whose shoulder is up to 75%. I vowed to leave it alone. I can’t remember much of this roll. I did almost sink a D’arce into his turtle position but couldn’t quite do it. I also never quite took his back. Still, I had him worried a couple times.

Next I rolled with coach Greggo. He did his usual butterfly guard, but this time I tried a pass I learned from Youtube. It worked about 2/3 of the way, and then he gave me trouble. We had a couple scrambles but I always managed to escape, square up, and bottle up his butterfly guard again. He was frustrated by that, and chalked it up to he’s not good at nogi, so I told him I studied up for his style. Then he got excited and started telling me of all this other stuff I can do to attack the butterfly guard. I told him for sure I’d try that on him next time.

Was that all my rolls? Seemed like there were more than that, but we did end 15 minutes early. Coach said it was 30 minutes of rolling but it was just four 6-minute rolls. D’oh! I still had energy left.

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