Mizblog

Greggo’s Tuesday morning. Last class before Thanksgiving. I felt mostly okay going into this one. The rib is holding up. I might be at 90%. We had a bunch of students who don’t normally train during the day, but school’s out for Thanksgiving for some folks so we even had some kids in the class. Warmup was extended, with the addition of butt scoots and drop steps. The drop steps wrecked my big toes. I think I’m done with those.

Greggo showed the lasso guard, but kind of assumed we knew it and were familiar with it. I was not familiar with it. The first trick he showed was that if you let them pass away from your lasso, you can then use it to roll them over onto their back.

The omoplata was for use when they tried to pass farther out, giving you space to spin under and push their upper arm down with your leg. I had real trouble spinning under. TJ and Andrew were quick to give me advice about momentum and crunching my midsection to reduce friction on the mat.

Then we rolled.

My first roll was with coach Greggo. The rules were: start in open guard, and no submissions the first round. I did a couple good moves but then got confused when he slowed down. He got mount repeatedly and had to prompt me to upa. That was embarrassing. Looks like I was getting ahead of myself there.

Next I rolled with Phil. My open guard sucked.

Then I rolled with Erin. He effortlessly passed my open guard. I tried to get an anaconda choke on him but I couldn’t lock it properly and ended up squeezing his head. I let go.

Next I rolled with Carlo. He showed me a the cradle and we got stuck there. I called for a reset.

After that I rolled with Matt, and did okay until I completely ran out of gas with 45 seconds left. I mean, I wanted to lie down on the mat and let him kill me.

The last round I sat with Cody, who was a new guy and was totally exhausted and didn’t know ANYTHING about BJJ. I went over proper closed guard technique and showed him side control.