Another solid night of tournament preparation.

I arrived just as the beginner’s class was finishing their warm up. Had a nice long row to loosen up and warm up, then did my 531 press and deadlift work for the week. Took the time to roll my legs and upper back out too.

Class was a little bit of conditioning to warm up, and then 10 or 15 minutes of takedowns, alternating 5 for 5 with our partners. I did the same one for each set of five, single, arm drag double, drop seoi nage, fireman’s carry, and just kept repeating that sequence.

Then we did some positional sparring. Starting in back control, our objective was to either mount or submit. Our partners had to get back to guard or reverse and end up on top. I reversed Ron a couple of times, but got mounted a few times too. When I had his back, I was experimenting with attempting the armlock from the back, but always failed in a way that allowed him to hip escape out and reverse me. For our last go, I body locked him. So, rather than having my feet on the inside of his thighs, I put one leg across his stomach and then locked it behind my other knee.

It felt pretty tight, and I was able to hold him there for a long while…but never really attacked his neck or advanced from the position.

A couple of other people were doing the same thing, so we took a few minutes and talked about it’s flaws (no mobility) and how to defeat it. You can fall to your side, which you normally wouldn’t want to do, and then push on his knee, which basically causes him to ankle lock himself….or he can release the lock if he can. We experimented and drilled it a few times too.

Next up was a few 5 minute rounds from our knees. Ron passed me pretty quick, eventually mounted, but I escaped to turtle and reversed from there. I ended up in a weird position, and he put an inverted triangle on me. Didn’t choke me, but smothered me enough to get me to tap. The second round was against Mongoose Mike. He’s light enough where I can keep a decent position most of the time on the bottom, but I have trouble getting on top of him. He nearly armlocked me a couple of times, but I’m getting better at the defense and escapes.

After class was over, I asked about the armlock from the back. And Damian showed a couple of us the Rousimar Palhares version of it. From back control, with an over-under grip, you kimura grip one arm, switch to the belt line back control, so one leg goes across his belt, and your foot hooks his other hip, and your other leg comes up high over his shoulder. Then circle your high side arm around his head to frame it, pop your leg up and over too, slam down on his head and straighten out the arm.

Took alot of tries, but I think I’ve got the sequence down now. The confusing part is getting the grip!