So Much Information!!

Afternoon class was hyper productive. As a warning, I'm writing down everything so I don't forget all the stuff I learned. Gunna be a long blog. ;)

Firstly, we worked leg-lock escapes. Kind of funny, after all the talks I've been having with people lately. It's something I definitely need to work on. We worked both a regular heel hook, corkscrew escape and a reverse heel hook escape.

I noticed several things I was doing wrong. For one thing, when corkscrewing out, I was too concerned with the placement of my foot when I'm pushing off. That's not really the key part. The key part is turning so your heel and knee are out of danger. I was trying to place my foot first and then turn. What I needed to do above all was turn. I also noticed that I was corkscrewing to the side instead of corkscrewing straight back, away from them. If I corkscrew to the side, they can roll with me.

Had plenty of practice with those escapes during rolling. Fabio, knowing I need to work on keeping legs out of danger and escaping leg locks, has been going almost exclusively for my legs. He'd catch one, let me escape and immediately go for the other leg. It was frustrating, funny and highly helpful all at the same time.

After grappling with Fabio, I went with a blue belt named Brian who we all call "Barf" (it's a long story. lol. No, he didn't barf.) and he has been a very helpful training partner from the get go, when I first came to Fabio's. Today, he got on me about my gi choke. He--and several other people--have pointed out that I go for the regular gi choke straight on. What I need to do is hip out a little bit so I have an angle to get my first arm deep. Then, using my leg to break them down the other way, I can get the second hand much easier. How many times do I have to be told/shown this to remember it?

Also, I picked Ben's brain about something that vexed me during a roll on Monday night. I rolled with a girl who was visiting from another school and she kept doing the mount escape where she puts her foot in my belt and pulls me off backwards. I have learned how to do that, but I couldn't remember how to combat it. All I could think to do was get low and grapevine. But that usually ended with me getting pulled back and dropping into a weird, half knee on belly thing where neither of us could really do anything.

Ben showed me several different ways to deal with it, but the main idea was that I need to go with it, not fight against it. The first way to deal with it is to stand up, hold down the leg that does not have the foot in your belt and step over. From there, you have several options, one of which is to roll over your shoulder and under their leg. They have no choice but to roll with you. You come out behind them and can then take their back. The other thing he showed me was to come forward, toward their head and turn and catch their leg. Their foot is trapped behind your back and all you have to do is set up kind of like a regular heel hook and rotate your body over their leg. Their own belt does the heel hook! Pretty cool.

Lastly, Fabio put me with a big guy named Orlando. He told Orlando to do nothing but hold me in guard and try to sweep me. It was a good exercise. I know I need to work on guard passing. This showed me some of the areas where I'm having trouble.

My brain is saturated. Great class. Lots learned and lots of fun. Now I'm going to go ice my shoulder and watch Food Network Challenge. ;)