Rodrigo had us work on two basic escapes from rear mount.
#1 was the strategy to drive the guy away from his preferred choking angle, which is to put his choking elbow on the mat. We trained the escape with both hands defending the choke to emphasize the body movement over using the hands.
A couple of key things. Rodrigo pointed out that the move I call "back2belly" is essentially the same way you want to switch your body before turning into the guy and driving into him with your shoulder. The order of the escape was to bridge as you turn toward the open side (away from the elbow) to escape the legs, then walk toward perpendicular as you begin to dip into the back2belly. Drive your shoulder into the guy as you put him on his back.
One thing I noticed as Rodrigo did the technique was that his head was always driving toward the far side of the guy's body as he drove the shoulder forward. It was a little detail and Rodrigo didn't make much of it. But it seemed to be one way to tell if you are doing the move correctly and positioning right.
I worked with Steve, and I could definitely feel the shoulder pressure.
#2 was in case the guy beat you to the point and managed to pull you down into his choking side. In this case, you want to do a version of the rear headlock self-defense escape, where you grab the arm with both hands, pull on the wrist and lift at the elbow as you look away from the elbow and, dipping down, stepping around to the back with your inside leg.
As a rear mount escape, you start with the same bridging hip motion to clear the legs, but then do the exact same escape move from the rear headlock self-defense escape.
I felt more than a little winded, as befits my first class of the week. I was 163.0 after a little standup training with Andrew and a long roll with Saud. Heavy, as expected, but not disastrous. I'll see what my next post-train weigh-in is before I start panicking.
Didn't workout today and instead will look to pick up Tuesday's workout either tomorrow or Saturday. I think it was a good idea to get in some extra time off insofar as the aches and bruises were starting to catch up with me. I've been sleeping pretty well, if not for as many hours as I probably should given the increased activity.
Some nice tatame tonight that I'll say something about over the weekend: a submission first that I'm extremely proud of insofar as it was one of four techniques I studied over the weekend. I think I've figured out a major potential training aid - rediscovered, actually. I don't want to push it. But if it can add some new techniques to my game this fast, then this should be a very productive stretch of time, after all.
