Study Hall

"It's not 'I get a turn and then you get a turn'... it's all my space and it's always my turn" - Greg Hamilton


Lunchtime BJJ at Grace Bellevue.


Carlos: "*YOU* again?"  Hee hee hee. I usually go to Sleeper on my alternate free Wednesday evenings, so he's not used to seeing me twice on Wednesday and then twice on Thursday. He was also impressed that he had had to kick me out last night. Ted and I shut down the mat, and would have gone longer, but Carlos had wanted to leave.


Same thing we did yesterday. I had a little performance anxiety ("Don't mess this up *again* in front of Carlos...") but I think I get it better today. He did have to tell me to not step on the shoulder/chest, though.... once I focused on setting  up the armbar (even though it's just a ruse) it went better, as it was not really my job to worry about clearing the arm any more.


I got to work with Z, whom I have not seen in a long while.


Drills: start from closed guard, pass guard to side control, bottom person does the Move Of the Day.


King Of the Hill: start in side control, top person tries to get front mount, bottom person tries to replace full guard.


I kept drawing the 300-lb-plus purple belt... in fact I got him twice and I don't think I got to work with anyone else. I went up there and waited for him to lie down so I could take top side control, and he just knelt there and stared at me... finally I said in genuine dismay, "I have to be on the bottom?"  Of course both he and Carlos cracked up at that. Joy. So- unhappily- I crawled down there, and of course could do nothing at all with his bulk on top of me, but managed to catch bottom half guard as he attempted to mount. He tried to pass my half guard for a while, and couldn't (!!) Then he sat back and said, "Well, you know, I wouldn't even try to get my leg out in this case. I'd just armbar you from here." Well, granted. But that's not the drill. You're supposed to pass my half guard and go to front mount. I was annoyed, and debated arguing the point, but couldn't figure out how to word it without sounding like I was issuing a smart-ass challenge to a purple belt who weighed about four of me- which would be kind of suicidal- so I just sighed and went back in line. He did say to Carlos, "She's really good!" and John called from the line, "Yeah, just TRY to get out of her half guard!" which salved my ego a bit.


The second time, I had bottom half guard high up on his thigh and ended up curled in a ball right under his groin with one knee on his solar plex- but he was big enough to have both knees on the mat even so, and we weren't sure if that counted as him having mount. I conceded that it likely did (again, challenging giant purple belt = insane), so went back in line.




Had to go pick up my Jeep at the mechanic (again), so arrived very late for 4:30 basics class. Adrian and JP were rolling. They paused to ask if I was here for class- since I was so late, I said "I can just hang out and watch, or rotate in- whatever." After a while, Adrian rotated out and I rolled with JP. He placed his palm on the mat and pushed it behind my skull to kink my neck to the side a bit, which totally flummoxed my effort to grab half guard on him when he went to front mount. I can almost always catch that half guard, so I paid attention to that detail. It is reminiscent of the detail I mentioned the other day of using the fingers to drag the palm across the mat and get that extra bit of tightness.


Next, the time slot for the Competition Class has been newly changed to something called "Study Hall". I was sorry to see the comp class go.... the only other one I can make is the Saturday unit once a month or so... and there's certainly something to be said for a session of really killer cardio and hard drilling. I had been expecting the class to go away, though- it just wasn't very thickly attended. I was happy that they replaced it with something else instead of just dropping the time slot.


 I wasn't sure what to expect from "study hall" but it was pretty cool. There were only 3 of us in there today. The prof asked us what we wanted to work on. I really want an easy and reliable choke from front mount, since I am spending a lot of time on top lately but not managing to finish the tap. I knew Carlos wanted to work more on positions than subs, though, so I wasn't surprised nor too bummed to get outvoted by the other two students. Their desired focii dovetailed, so that worked out well. Lindsey wanted to work on getting out of bottom half guard, so I was all for that. The white belt guy wanted to address passing open guard.


So we started with one person on the ground on hir back, feet on the partner's hips. Stander throws opponent's feet to the side. Opponent turns in, places hands on stander's knees (bottom arm reaches to far knee- don't cross top arm over face), then places soles on opponent (one at a time- outside/far foot first.) and ends up back at the beginning.


Then, stander pushes opponent's knees to hir chest. When opponent pushes back, stander shoves legs to the mat and lunges into half guard. Person on bottom needs to turn on the hip and get the arm/shoulder up for the underhook- QUICKLY. Once the person is on you, it's too late. The matward hand should be doing the "Fonz"- smoothing the hair at your temple. (Again, this is an important detail for me to try to incorporate to avoid the vicious crossface.) Duck the head in deep, get the top knee in, push opponent's far knee out, twist and replace full guard.


There was less drilling (although drilling did happen) and more discussion Q/A than in a normal class. It was nice to be able to ask lots of questions and get individual help. I can see this class becoming less and less awesome as more students occur.  If it stays small, this could really boost my game.  :)


Another plus: unlike competition class sometimes does, this one didn't leave me too physically exhausted to do yet another class tonight.


Yes, ANOTHER class (five and a half classes in two days- woo-hoo!). There was an "all levels" class and a "black belt" (two stripe blue and up) class. I picked "all levels".


We did a replace-full-guard-from-bottom-half almost identical to the one we had just played with in Study Hall.


Opponent in your closed guard, leaning weight on your belt. loop your hands under hir wrists, grab your own wrist, and bump hips up violently while thrusting hands up to break opponent's grip on your belt. Allow your arms to continue the circle up, out and down, and whizzer one of the opponent's biceps. (At this juncture, I cautioned Lindsey to make sure to tilt her head to one side while performing this grip break... I have experienced (on both sides of the equation) this type of thing resulting in heads/faces clunking together with much force!)


Turn, bring foot over, omoplata. I continue to struggle a bit with getting to a sitting position and rearranging my legs. Jamie was using a little kick to boost himself up, but I didn't get enough time to play with emulating that tonight. Next
 time. Another improvement opportunity: I am now consistently remembering that I need to grab the belt to keep the guy from rolling out, but I still need to perfect the timing of switching the grips. I showed the Lindsey the "Cindy variation" to finishing the omoplata, where you loop your arms under the neck and crank that up while you are levering the arm up. (Ow.)


Some positional training from closed guard and then side control, rotating partners. I have been noticing anew his week how badly I suck at getting out of closed guard and side control. I think that in the last several months, I have been better at attempting to not end up there in the first place (good!), but that also means that I haven't been working on the skill deficiency in that area (bad!).


Whew. I am quite exhausted. I could almost have fallen asleep on the way home.