5 to 7p

Abbreviated post...Matt's birthday dinner at K-Paul's tonight. See Matt below about to open a can of whoop ass on some poor featherweight on Saturday. Happy birthday Matt! It took 36 years, but at 37 with one tourney under your White Belt, you're finally a man.

5-5:30p: Stretched and solo warm-up. Did a bunch of solo drills and some gynastica natural I learned this summer t UNIJJ. Felt good.

5:30-5:45p: Led warm-ups, stretches, and standard drills again. Good, steady pace. Ended exactly at 15minutes. Nice!

5:45-6p: Sweep / pass the guard. Got swept...A lot. Silly stuff really. I'm having serious trouble passing guard. It all comes down to posture issues.

6-6:15p: Technique 1. Side control to mount transition. Great. I learn a few tips yesterday about how to escape side control and Professor Matthias shows everyone how to counter those very same tricks and get to mount. ;-)

6:15-6:30p: Technique 2. Two different chokes from mount. First a fairly standard palm up / palm up and lean forward choke. Second was a Professor special. His go-to choke from mount. If opponent defends the first palm up grip, take a deeper palm down grip on the same side while retaining the initial weak palm up grip. Put your head on the mat to the other side and base out with a leg opposite your head. Then work the palm down grip around the back of head until side of wrist is against neck. Bring both elbows in and move head toward center. I'm not sure I'm ready to try it. It put a tremendous amount of pressure on my wrists and I couldn't maintain a tight grip. Maybe when my wrists are stronger.

6:30-7p: Rolls. 6 minute rounds. Got the champ, Cleveland (White Belt), Ricky (White Belt), and Steve (White Belt). All great rolls. Some deep half work. Lots of spider guard. Couple sweeps. Got swept a bit. Got to work the side control to mount technique of the day a couple times and had a couple unsuccessful choke attempts (both resulted in upa reversal). Add mount maintenance to my list of serious problems. That said, I was very pleased with the training.

Forgot to stretch. Drats.