805BJJ Class 101: Kimura from everywhere, rolling

I came in early to watch Saranya’s class. She did really well. I was impressed.

We started our class with a half-assed warm-up as the kids finished off in the corner. Then we paired up to learn how to do a kimura from closed guard. I already knew how to do this, so I worked on refining my technique. Specifically, grip the arm HARD by doing a motorcycle rev grip, and make sure their elbow is bent and locked, and keep your arms clamping their upper arm tight, and use your legs to lock down their hips. My training partner was Professor Pat, and he gave me pointers that were opposite to what Greggo was teaching. Greggo came over and straightened us out eventually. I can do a kimura pretty well.

Next was Christian showing a kimura from bottom half guard. The idea, he said, is to distract them with your underhook (though later Greggo said you more typically get it when blocking the cross face) and get a no-thumb wrist grip on their cross face arm, while maintaining an inner leg hook. Sit up on your wrist-gripping elbow as you reach the other arm over and lock up the figure 4 grip. Bend the arm to 90 degrees and twist your hands to push bone to bone and make it uncomfortable. Squeeze your legs together as you roll under, keeping your tight grip on their upper arm, and rotate their shoulder until they tap.

We also learned how to finish it from top side control. Take the near arm, pin the wrist to the belt with your top hand, slip your bottom hand under the elbow and lock up the kimura grip. Now you want to step over them to go to a north-south orientation. Roll them up on their side with their locked arm up. Brace your knee in their back to keep them from lying flat. Hug their arm to your chest. Twist it away from their body to break a belt or gi grip, then sit up while keeping it locked to your body, then rotate the shoulder to put their hand in their own back pocket for the tap.

Rolling started slow. I rolled with Carlos, and he quickly gave up the hip bump sweep and I got mount. He got his feet up high to pull me over backward, but then he didn’t get on top. Huh. I could have submitted him all over the place just by throwing my weight on him, but I didn’t.

After that, Mark told me to go roll with “Mad Dog” Mark. We went off in the Adam corner and got to it. I started on the bottom, and somehow got on top and mounted him. He was doing push ups on me and trying to lock up a kimura from bottom mount, and I wasn’t able to sink an arm bar on him. He almost recovered half guard on me but I maintained mount and just ended up smashing him.

Next round was with Ray. I managed to do pretty well against him, and didn’t get submitted, but he was also secure from my submission attempts. He did pass to side control once, but I was able to get him to take kesa gatame, and when I threatened to take his back he retreated and broke contact.

The round after that I rolled with Joel, the little hispanic kid from Saranya’s class. He was going to roll with Aiden but Johnson was off doing other stuff so Joel jumped at the chance to roll with me. We started with me in his guard, and I let him work. He locked up a good arm bar. Tap. Then we went to Joel in my guard, and I wiggled around to test his base (he was wobbly and he somehow leg locked himself once) but eventually he passed and I turtled. He was working on something that I didn’t recognize and I was coaching him to get his hooks which he finally did and sunk in the choke just before the end of the round.

Last round was with Sean. I started in his guard and he started doing spider guard on me. I tried sliding him between my legs but he just slid right out again when I tried to sit on him. He then went to a De La Riva guard and tipped me over onto the wall. I barely got out of that when Mark called a pause in the action to hand out Carlos’ blue belt! Then we went back to rolling. Sean again did the open guard, and I started passing. He set up the bait baseball choke, but I saw it coming and prevented it, which impressed him.

Then we all hip tossed Carlos onto the crash pad and class was over.

Afterward, Saranya and I went to Chipotle!

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