Glimpse

Trained yesterday. Blogging today.

9:10-9:30a: A bit late start this morning. I was the only one at the gym at 9am. Everyone seemed to showed up a couple minutes after 9a. Warm-up / drills. Worked up a good sweat.

9:30-9:40a: Mount escape drills. Upa and elbow/hip escape.

9:40-10a: Technique. Multiple chokes from mount. Palm up / palm up, palm up / palm down when opponent bridges, palm up / palm down when opponent defends choke, and transition to bow and arrow using your gi lapel. The lapel move seemed a bit gimmicky. If you can't get one of the other chokes, I don't know how you'd pull off the gi-assisted bow and arrow. Not quite ready to add that to my repertoire.

10-10:30a: Rolls. 6 minute rounds. Got a Purple and two Blues. Roll with Purple went very well. Got a sweep from butterfly setup. Textbook from Revolution 1. Lots of lasso and spider work. Kept him on guard and off balance a lot, but I couldn't finish other sweeps. Roll with second Blue went well, but not as well. I got a knee push sweep (again...textbook Revolution 1), but not much else. Got stuck in his half guard. He swept me. So smooth and calm. Unsettling really. I didn't feel too threatened, but I was definitely on defensive most of the roll. After 6 minutes, I was gasping for breath. He wasn't sweating. Roll with last Blue went much better. Struggled to pass guard. Eventually passed. Got a kimura from north south. After we reset he began attacking, aggressively. Almost caught me in an arm bar from x-pass. Pretty slick combo. Bunch of turtle work. Some lasso and a lot of spider work. He hipped into it a lot and as he would break one grip, I'd switch to lasso or reset the other spider. Every time I'd move for a sweep, he'd switch it up. Got a slick sweep. Not sure what I did, but in the middle of some intense pressure I noticed an opportunity to compromise his balance with a slight nudge to the knee. Over he went.

Fun training. I'm starting see things that I've never seen before. Opportunities for sweeps mostly. Especially during transitions. As my opponent defends against one sweep set up, he usually opens himself up to something else. I'm not executing as quickly as I'd like, but I'm stoked to be recognizing opportunities. Feel like I got a glimpse into my future game.