Slugged out grill + more leg lasso open guard.

On time!  Lets see how long that streak lasts, now…  Normal warm-ups, then guard pass.  Normal today, but I still tried to play a lot of open.  White belt Jamie got a pretty good pass from me fumbling around trying to play open, when usually I try to break him down.  Interesting thing, I had a much harder time getting the leg lasso than I normally do.   In technique portion, Marco addressed how to properly do it.  Wait for your opponent to start sliding his knee forward, and straightening his arms.  When he does, bring the legs up and pinch knees together, pressing his arms together.  Hips sideways, then go for the lasso while pushing away with the foot (in his hip) and pulling both sleeves.

So anyway, guard break drills.  Things of note: I have absolutely nothing for Marco.  I tried not to get excited  and to be really deliberate, but of course, the second he let me get to half, I thought to myself, “This is it.  Here comes the glory.  I shall pass this black belt’s guard with ease, then crown myself the king of all jiujitsu.  You there, servant boy! Bring me your finest meats and cheeses.”  Needless to say it didn’t quite work out like that for the kid.  I went flying, and I don’t even know exactly how he did it.  I was able to pass Vaughn’s guard with some difficulty, then I got blue belt Nick in my guard.  We had some good back and forth, then I took a pretty big knee to the right eyeball.  I stopped for a second, then somehow got the leg lasso sweep from him having me in north-south. Pretty proud of that, the kid is good.  Then a purple easily passed, same one as before whose name I don’t know.  Time.

In techniques, we looked at rolling to an omoplata and rolling to a triangle from leg lasso.  For both of these, start in normal leg lasso, then slide right foot underneath to go into turtle next to the guy, using the leg lasso foot on the guys hip to move around.  Then either roll over shoulder closest to the guy and kick out (for omoplata)  or half roll and turn back in, throwing leg over guys shoulder for the triangle.  Need to drill this way more.  After class Vaughn showed a cool variation of this, where you establish cross grips on the guy’s sleeves,  then roll straight into the triangle. He said you can set that up from half guard if your quick about it. I MUST remember to try this, it felt way tighter to me than the first way.  We also went over that hip bump sweep from half guard. I need to remember to post my arm BEFORE I attempt that sweep.  I think it will work.

Rolls tonight, I got Ricky(blue), Nick (blue) and Mike( blue). All awesome rolls.  With Ricky I started with him in my guard and resolved not to break him down, to play open.  I’m glad I did, I caught him one of my first ever standing open sweeps.  I leg lasso’d, grabbed the opposite foot, then put my other foot on the lasso’d bicep.  This felt good. I got him above my hips and he pretty much went straight over. I need to scramble better tho, because it was anyone's game there for a minute.  I went to knee on belly looking for baseball chokes, and he of course got deep half.  Swept me.  I some how got my leg free and threw up a triangle.  He got his hand in just in time.  I sort of kimura’d him from there, cause his arm was trapped in such a weird position.  We reset, then time called. 

Next was Nick.  Started from his guard.  It seems like the whole roll was spent trying to pass his guard.  I finally did, went to side control, knee on belly, and started looking for baseball bat choke.  Got swept, wound up in guard.  Hard to break nim down, but I think I finally did.  This roll was pretty technical.  I went to mount at one point and tried to play technical mount, but he got to turtle.  Tried to darce him, but he sat back to his guard.  That’s such the right move for when I try to darce you, because I freak out and let go immediately.  Time .

Last roll Mike. Mike showed some finesse in this roll that I wasn’t expecting.  At one point we wound up on knees.  He grabbed my lapels and threw himself down sideways.  Came pretty close to getting the choke, but I somehow got out of that.  After that I baseball choked him from knee on belly (finally! The only fraking move I went for tonight!)

After class, I drilled for a bit with Jamie, who as I said is really learning quickly.  Managed to catch another shot to the face, so i have matching bruises today.  

Thoughts.  Work on ALL unorthodox sweeps.  Figure out the best way to set up baseball bat choke form side.  Maybe its from knee on belly, maybe it would work better from someplace else for me.  Practice the techniques shown tonight, because they are supercool.