Thursday, February 19, 2009

Thursday Night Training

The lesson class was a reprise of the moves to the back from in front of the turtle. This time, we went more directly to the choke, for example.

Rodrigo added a roll to the clock choke. Key to getting the roll correctly is to pull in on the wrist of your opponent and to dig your elbow in tight to control his body. You want to let go of the collar and grab your own wrist (the one that was controlling his wrist) so that you have a lock on his upper body before you go into the roll.

Another point with the roll is that it isn't so much a back roll as it is a side roll. It becomes a side roll as you move higher up and across the guy's upper body until you are almost perpendicular. As you turn into the roll, with the grips, the guy's body will fall right into your lap.

Definitely some moves that I can incorporate into my game - which really lacks much in the way of taking the back.

Tatame was all no gi, as is the way of Thursdays. Nothing spectacular, though I did manage an arm-in guillotine that fortunately was more choke than crank. That's a technique that I think will really come in handy in no-gi competition, and there are still very few people outside the elite ranks that are finishing the guillotine with the arm in.

Excellent number on the scale: 156.4. Admittedly, I've not been eating much for the past 24 hours due to recent events. But I won't pretend not to appreciate being a lot closer to that 154.9 number than I was at the beginning of the week.