Triangles with Doug

A religion that forgives me for being a shit doesn't have near the impact of one that promises that whatever I send out is coming right back at me. -Anihow



Now that I'm not going to Bothell on my free Friday evenings, I have discovered that Prof Doug is doing a "study hall" at Bellevue in that time slot. We had a great group of mostly colored belts in there tonight, and worked on triangle setups.

First, some drills from guard, sans hands (Doug made us lace our fingers behind our necks).

Then: Start with foe in your closed guard, two cuff grips. Transition to a double knee shield or to butterfly guard (feet on hips). Act like you're going for spider guard on one side, and "miss"... transition to triangle. Yank the hell out of that cuff to help fuel your angle change, and try to get said angle change down to as few steps (and as quick) as possible.

Now: You are in top side mount. Make sure you have kneed the opponent's near arm atop your thigh. Slide your knee onto belly. when s/he pushes at knee with hir other hand, you grab the wrist/cuff and pin that hand. Yank your leg back, straight out, then hoist it up and over, shove your foot behind opponent's head. At the same time, with your free hand, haul hir head up (my partners and I discovered for ourselves that that was a lucious detail- very distracting to the victim). Roll. As you roll, grab opponent's other sleeve and lock the triangle as you finish the roll.

This intimidated me, as it looked complicated and showboaty. But when I tried it, it was nice and smooth.

Finally: You have opponent in armbar with your knees over hir face, but s/he is clasping hir hands together. Act like you're going to try to pry hir hands loose with your foot, but then shove the foot right through. Open your knee above opponent's forehead. This prompts hir to sit up. Let hir. This results in putting hirself right into your triangle. (Another tidbit we discovered during the drill... this bait doesn't work nearly so well unless you really act like you are going for the armbar, and keep your leg over the opponent's face. That way, as soon as you lift that leg and s/he sees daylight, s/he wants to lunge up into it. At first, my partner was not covering my face- and I had to think about where I was "supposed" to go for the drill.)

A roll with (blue belt) Daniel, a roll with Mario, a roll with Doug. Good competitive matches all (of course Doug was letting me work a little).

Nice gi choke from Doug: You are in top side control. Sneakily get ahold of your own gi tail (on the side closest to opponent's feet) and wait your chance to shoot it to the far side of hir neck. You must leave yourself plenty of slack, because you are going to feed this gi tail to your other hand, which is behind opponent's neck.  Grab opponent's pants at hir hip (same side as you are on), turn N/S, put your forehead to mat.

I adore gi tail chokes, but for some reason my brain is very impaired at retaining them.