Mizblog

We had all 3 black belts on the mat, but Mark did all the instructing. First, he told us how to do threes in a flow roll. Each person gets the opportunity to do 3 moves, and then the other person gets a chance to do 3 moves. I paired up with Sergio, and we did alright.

Then we got to the move of the day, which was something to do from side control bottom (or in fact from when your opponent is about to pass your guard!). Basically, you build a frame, move behind the frame to get your hips out, hip heist to flip them over, reach for their knees and pull them as you pull your knees underneath yourself, then drive forward on your knees like a toddler, tipping them over along the axis of their shin. You can also get your knee in to make space, as though you were about to recover guard, but then spring the knee out as you flip your hips over and go to your knees. If they try to defend it by tying up your lower leg with their hand, you can just donkey kick it off and immediately spring back to your knees.

So then we rolled. I stuck with Chris except for the last 2 rolls, when I went with Jeremy. Chris has some slinky moves, and we sort of flowed around and were relaxed. It was good, and he reminded me how to do the damn butterfly sweep. You see, you have to lift the underhook and the leg on the same side. Duh! I was trying to lift with an overhook. It didn’t work.

Anyway, I pulled off the move of the day on Jeremy! Coming back the other way, he almost finished me with a collar choke from guard.

At the end, Mark was enthusiastic about how well I did during the drills, and pointed out that I’m reaping the benefit of regular attendance.