Tonight we drilled arm bars from the guard, then worked on triangles. Next we moved to a "teepee" triangle as a response to your opponent posturing up to defend the original triangle attempt. We worked an arm bar from that position, then practiced omoplata from a failed triangle.
Live rolling was next. I rolled with a blue belt for my first round and did about the same as I usually do against him, which is to say, not very well. I guess I was able to survive (postpone?) some of his onslaught.
Round two, I went against a no-stripe white belt (same as me)...little did I know he had a strong wrestling background. He rolled hard the first round and I played a lot of defense. Definitely more of a challenge than I was expecting. Class was running late, so we had the option to stop or go for one more round. I rolled again with the same guy. We turned out to be the only ones rolling, so we had an audience. I immediately went for a "shoulder guard" I've been studying up on via a Cyborg DVD I have. From there I quickly slapped a triangle on him, just like in the video, hah! Unfortunately, he postured and I had to rely on my just-learned teepee triangle to stop him from escaping. I squeezed hard but he wouldn't tap! I figured it wasn't working so I tried to transition to an arm bar but that was a mess that allowed him to get me in side control. From then on it was back to my increasingly normal "defend-and-suffocate-until-they-submit-me-or-the-bell-rings" game. He told me after the round that he would have tapped after two more seconds of that teepee triangle. Two. More. Seconds.
Despite almost submitting someone tonight, I felt like it may have been my poorest performance. None of my escapes seemed to be working even when I feel like they should have. I seemed to be getting gassed more quickly than usual too. I feel like I pretty much got steamrolled tonight.
Hey Todd, I finally found your blog. The BJJ class I go to is taught by a 2 stripped Blue belt who teaches 5 days a week for 2 hours a class, sometimes 2 classes a day. Because he's a blue belt he can't rank his class of white belts who also train an insane amount of the time. I'm a brown belt in Judo, but I never trained 5 days a week, I'm out of shape and they've got about 10 years youth on me. BJJ is tough. I get my butt kicked every class, but you get better. The only 2 advantages I seem to be able to pull from Aikido and Judo are that standing-wise they know the mechanics but don't have a feel for off-balancing so I am almost always in a dominant position on the ground (for about 2 seconds), and their kesa-gatame and kami shiho gatame they don't practice much so it's easy to escape and they aren't tight enough with it so it has that crushing feel. If you have any suggestion for dealing with these ground monsters I would love to hear them. My blog is up and running again at your suggestion.
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