Mizblog

Got on the mat and bowed in with coach Greggo, anticipating coach Mark would arrive and take over the class. We warmed up doing alternating guard arm bar swings. Wheee!

Mark didn’t show, so Christian suited up and taught us the very basics of guard passing and posture.

Basic guard posture involves squeezing your legs next to the bottom person’s hips. Grip the lapels and take off the slack to minimize your opponent’s ability to move. Your other hand should find the hip bone, and line up the elbow with their thigh bone. Christian had the bottom person test the top person’s base stability.

Breaking the guard involves keeping the hips on the ground, getting a knee into the butt while you shift your base to one side, then bending your back to extend it and break open the guard. I should have mentioned that the hand you have on the chest is on the same side as the leg you move in to anchor the butt.

From there, you raise your butt-knee off the mat, press the hip-hand-side leg down as you staple it down with the butt-knee. Then you pass the stapled leg, going for an underhook on the far side, lift the close side arm and slide the stapling leg through to kesa gatame.

After practicing that for a bit, we went to the small room to practice the sweep single leg takedown on the wrestling dummies. One of them punched me in the face and left a mark. Anyway, the takedown involves pulling down from the grip and holding them bent over while you do a drop step to the outside, elbow hook one knee, turn 90 degrees into them with your head touching their torso, get back to your feet and drive through them to finish the takedown. You can also turn them more to get them off balance and finish the takedown.

Then we did takedown sparring, which I loved. I took Dave down with a sacrifice throw, and I almost got the single leg of the day on a couple people. Not quite, though.

Regular rolling started thereafter. I rolled with Dave first, and told him my rib was sensitive, so if it hurt I’d just tap. He went easy on me, but it was just too painful to continue. I sat out most of the rolls thereafter.