6:10-6:20p: Brief warm-up and standard drills.
6:20-7p: Hip escape drills. Lots of them. Different variations. Good "back to basics" class that taught me a few different ways to create space and escape as someone is passing to improve position before getting squashed. One of the drills was very counter-intuitive and most of us had difficulty with the movement. Assume opponent takes double-underhook, reaches around with the left hand, grabs your left gi collar, and starts stacking your right leg/side. If you are too late to create space and maintain leverage necessary to thwart the stack and recover guard, you can still post off opponent's neck with your right leg and bridge to right shoulder while swinging left leg over to facilitate a back roll to the right (i.e., roll INTO the stack). You can block your opponents hip with your right hand as you back roll out to prevent him/her from taking your back and to facilitate guard recovery after the back roll escape. VERY awkward, but it was very smooth/fluid when Wayne and Kiri demonstrated the technique. I imagine ginastica natural training would make the technique much easier.
7-7:35p: 10 minute rolls. Wayne encouraged us to roll at 75% and keep moving without gassing. First up was Matt (Blue Belt). He broke my posture most of the time I was in his guard and swept me a couple times. At one point he took mount, transitioned to seated mount, and I rolled over. He took my back. I established back survival posture. Defended neck attacks, and eventually he gave up and went back to mount. After some time, he found an arm bar. I wasn't breathing too hard at the end of 10 minutes, so I think we followed Instructor Wayne's instructions pretty well.
Second roll was with Dave. Dave's a 3-stripe white belt with 5 months experience. Probably 60lbs lighter than me. We kept the roll slow as instructed. At one point Dave took my back and started in with RNC attacks as I tried to establish back survival posture and set up for an escape. He never got the blade of his wrist under my chin and at one point stopped squeezing to ask if I was ok. Yeah. I was ok. I told him I'd tap if I wasn't. I wanted him to keep going because each time he reset his left arm to secure the choking arm in bicep and cup his left hand behind my head he would expose the left arm to attack. I tried once, but missed due to a slippery wrist. Waited patiently and he stuck it out there again to reset and attempt to get better leverage. I raised my left arm a bit when his left elbow extended beyond my left arm, I raised the left arm, grabbed his left wrist with my right arm, and pulled down (making sure his thumb stayed pointing up) for the armbar. He verbally tapped. Said he didn't know he was vulnerable until it was too late. Neither did I, until Rusty taught it in self defense class a while back. Not breathing too hard after this roll either.
Got Nick (Blue Belt) for my last roll. I thought it went very well. We actually "rolled." Had a couple near passes that would have been passes on most white belts, But Nick had great hip escape movement that created a ton of space to re-insert a knee. Spent a lot of time in half butterfly guard. At another point in the roll he started to stack me and I tried the fancy roll out we learned earlier in the class...no go. In fact, I felt like if I forced the roll I might have injured my neck. Hmm... need to lose some of my gut (gets in the way of back rolls) and practice the motion more before I try that again. Nick had my back (what's new?) for what seemed like the last 2 minutes of the roll. Struggled to establish back survival and fended off chokes. Survived... Again, not breathing too hard after the roll.
Overall impressions: I managed to complete 3 ten minute rolls without breathing too hard. Was I working at 75% as instructed? Or was I rolling too easy? Is my cardio improving? Not sure, but it was a good class nonetheless.
No comments:
Post a Comment