Another quasi-open mat night. And we had quite the crowd…the girls class stayed and Damian joined in here and there as well.

I started off with Randy…who crushed me. I attempted to pull guard, and got half guard. Kept trying to escape my hip enough to slide my other knee through, but he popped up and passed when I did so. Twice I managed to recover half guard, but he ended up doing the same thing. He locked up a kimura pretty quickly. We went again, and basically the same thing happened, though I hid my wrist enough where he couldn’t get the kimura, though he was hunting for it.

We switched, and I got Dave. He’s coming off a rib injury, so we took it a little easy. I came in, I got to guard, switched to spider guard, he stood up. I tried a couple of different sweeps, but he defended and ended up kneeling back down. Then I got the exact same triangle choke setup that I did on Monday against Ron, and finish it.

I took a two minute breather and grabbed some water, before I found out that Damian has assigned me to Gina the Velociraptor. 111 pounds of beating. I started with trying to pull guard, and she countered by grabbing my gi at the knees, and pinning them to the ground, so I have no maneuverability. I head pushed to keep her from passing, and used that to stand up, shot the single leg, got it, and was going for the dump when she started a guillotine choke, and jumped to guard. I was in trouble, and I don’t know the escape, so I started to improvise. Turned my head towards her body to relieve some of the pressure, put on hand over her shoulder to open up my neck some, took my other hand and tried to grip her wrist to loosen it some, but he had it hidden under my head. I heard Damian trying to walk me through the escape, but it wasn’t making sense, and things were rapidly turning gray, so I tapped. Turns out he thought I was in a “arm-in” guillotine, when I was really in a “no-arm” guillotine, and the escapes are different. We went through the correct one. I was on the right track…arm over her shoulder, grip her wrist, post my head to the floor and tripod up. Still holding her wrist, work my elbow to the inside of her thigh, and work to open her guard, pin her leg with that side knee, slide my other knee through to pass, then hop to her other side to finish.

He also pointed out why I’m getting passed so much from half guard. When I escape my hip, I’m opening my legs, so there’s nothing holding them to me. It’s a simple fix…I can open my legs, but I need to maintain that control by hooking with my other leg. Damian and Gina showed me two different ways to do it.

Next up was Renaulto. I purposely started in half guard, and worked the techniques that I just learned. Took a while, but I did manage to get back to guard. Renaulto let me reset and we did it again a couple of more times, until I got a KILLER calf cramp. Worst one I can remember. Stretched it out, rolled it with The Stick, stretched it some more.

Gina asked me to roll with Jen, a purple belt. We went light for a few minutes. Tim also wanted a piece of me. His double attack triangle/armlock is very annoying. He did say that I’m getting better, which is always nice to hear.

Did my week 1 deadlifts for 531. Struggled a little. They require a lot of core strength…and my core was pretty well worked already! But I got it done. I think I may have to refrain from doing the 531 on jiu jitsu nights.