ATM in effect once again - nine weeks in a row.
Lindsey was back leading the Monday class. He was out last week with the birth of his first son.
We started off with what he called a "Simon Sez" warmup that was a mix of calisthenics and stretches with typical emphasis on isometric strength in pushups. He also threw in a long set of triangles, which he hasn't always included.
The emphasis was a bit more training-oriented than instructional. We focused on escaping the back, with Lindsey showing us preferred approach of grabbing the ankle or foot and pulling in to help get control of the leg that you are going to remove.
It was good practice - as I wrote a little while ago, escaping rear mount is one of my critical weaknesses to work on for the rest of the year. I still struggle to complete a good technical escape. But I'm doing a better job of breaking down and identifying my escape plan.
To finish off, after doing some rear mount specific work, we spent a lot of time working on passing the guard. Ironically, I didn't get any practice passing and instead spent about 20 minutes working my guard. I was pretty much scissor sweep city when I was successful - bailing out to half guard when the sweep or defenses were starting to fail. I also like some guard replacement I was able to put together during one session - not something that happens every day.
A good night of training and a perfectly legit 158.0 on the scale afterwards. I was having a lot of good success with the bow and arrow choke from the back - something I'm going to have to keep in mind.
