5:15-7:00p

5:15-5:35p: Stretches. Watched Jeremy, Dorian, and Tran mix it up a bit. Jeremy and Dorian looked like they were working on kickboxing. Tran and Dorian may have been sticking to straight boxing. Not sure. Pretty intense stuff. I am perfectly comfortable rolling with Jeremy and Dorian, but would get demolished at stand up. Geez.

5:35-5:55p: Warm-ups / standard drills. Collin led. Slightly longer than usual. I managed a dozen or so standard push-ups, but still could only complete 60% or so of the total.

5:50-6:10p: Pass the guard. Maintaining posture is a constant struggle when in an opponent's guard. Anyone with experience or a bit of tenacity can break my posture or sit up on me pretty much at will and complete a sweep. Oh well. Just one more thing on my "need to work on" list.

6:10-6:45p: Self defense techniques. Front bear hug (with underhooks) to arm bar - posture, create hip space, pummel one arm under, wrap around waist, grab tricep, step inside to judo throw over back to knee on belly/side to arm bar. Fairly simple. Bully headlock take down escape to arm bar - frame, walk hips away from back, leg around head with frame to break head lock then trap arm for armbar. Had trouble securing the armbar. Need to work on that.

6:45-7:10p: Side control to mount techniques. Learned two. The first one was fairly simple and involved a quick transition to mount by swinging outside leg over the opponents legs when opponent defends by resting inside leg ankle on the outside knee. I forget the set up for this, but something tells me it came from reverse kesa gatame. The second was my favorite because I learned some sort of hip switch technique that proved to be quite effective in dislodging opponents inside arm from side and trapping it away from the body. Nick attempted to keep his arm to his side and I felt comfortable enough to dislodge and trap his arm from pure hip movement as opposed to using an arm to create the initial space. I'll definitely be trying that move a lot in future rolls. Once the arm is dislodged from the side and up...well...lots of attack options open up. But, tonight, we worked the knee to belly option. Assuming opponent begins to push knee with outside arm, we posted outside arm through space, secured left underarm with inside arm, then spider walked outside arm away from opponent to remove the defending arm from knee. Finished by sliding leg over to mount. Nice.

7:10-7:30p: Rolls. Only time for two rolls tonight. First roll with a brand new guy. Forgot his name...drats. Tonight was his first night. He seems fairly athletic and strong, but didn't understand basic concepts like guard, pass guard, side control, mount. So I spent the roll showing him basic posture when in someone's guard and simple technique to break posture. Then I showed him two guard passes: 1) knee over thigh from soldier, pass leg over, then release the pinned thigh; and 2) standard stack pass. Encouraged him to keep his arms tight and defend his neck. Talk about a crash course before his next roll!

Second roll was with Matt. Matt's ribs are still aching. I tried to show him the posture break technique I learned at the seminar on Sunday, but I think I was a tad too aggressive when demonstrating the break because it brought him down onto the sore ribs and he didn't look too comfortable. We took it easy the rest of the roll.