10-11a: Self defense course. Mostly young kids. One other adult, my age (Earl). Taught by husband/wife brown belt couple (Wayne/Keira). Very nice teachers. Turns out Wayne is my age and we attended UCSD at the same time. I don't think our paths crossed in school. We learned bully head lock defense/escape/submission transitions. Posture, block punch or prevent clasp, trap arm, then three variations for escape. Two of the variations involved a take down to head lock break to armbar. One variation involved head lock escape to rear naked choke.
11a-12:15p: Open mat. I was the only white belt. One black belt, one brown, a few purples, and a handful of blues. Matt (blue belt) asked me to roll. He's probably 40lbs lighter, but as with almost everyone at this school, in great shape. Matt pulled me into guard and I spent a while fending off sweep attempts. Eventually I trapped a half butterfly and slowly worked to side control. He made a number of bridge/hip escape attempts and other foot techniques to recover half or full guard. I guess I defended well enough because I maintained side control. Eventually hip switched/shuffled to separate his right arm from his side. Moved left leg around in front of his face to set up for arm bar and he defended. Ended up sticking my left leg under his head and then locked my left foot behind my right knee - like a a triangle from north-south, but I was sitting up and didn't have an arm trapped. Same choke set up that I used a couple weeks ago. I applied the pressure and could hear him struggling for air. Tap. Said he didn't know he could be choked like that. I didn't either until I choked someone with it a couple weeks ago. Still don't know what it's called. I improvised the choke both times as a reaction to opponent defense of my arm attacks. We went again. Good back and forth with him applying lots of attack pressure. Passed my guard without too much trouble. Arm and neck attacks. Forced me to scramble and survive. He set up for an armbar from mount. I saw it coming, but was late in setting up my escape. We struggled a bit, but I managed to fend it off until the buzzer rang. He released and we stopped the roll. He had me though. I was about 10 seconds away from losing control of my defense and giving up the arm.
Second roll was with Johad (Yohad?), also a blue belt. He's much closer to my weight, but a little shorter. Defended a number of sweep attempts with low base and weight distribution. Eventually got swept. Not sure what happened but he had me in north-south a couple of times and each time the only thing I could think to do was escape to elevator then defend the back attack via turtle. He found a few holes and pulled me onto my back. Tried my best to establish back survival posture and defend the choke, but after a bit of a struggle he eventually got the choke. Tap. We went again and it was mostly the same story, but this time he couldn't get the choke from the back and he eventually ended up transitioning from the back to mount during one of my escape attempts. From mount he set up the arm bar via seated mount. Seated mount escape worked, but my balance was off and he took my back again. He managed to transition from back to mount again, wedge my arm off my side, and secured the arm bar...No escape this time. Tap.
I caught up with Sayar before calling it a day. Sayar is 12 and an orange belt. Very big kid though. I thought he was least 15. Probably weighs 180lbs already. He was in the self defense class earlier, but wasn't rolling with the group - just watching. We worked together for 15 minutes or so and he practiced a number of chokes, arm bars, triangles, an omo plata, and hip escapes to guard recovery.
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