No gi night. Even though it’s starting to cool off, we were all hot, sweaty, and working hard last night.

We warmed up with a series of passing drills. Pop up guard breaks, leg throws, knee slices, etc.

The lesson of the night was escaping mount. In no gi, your gripping options are limited, and this hinders your typical upa and roll escape. So we work and elbow in, elbow escape, switch directions, elbow escape again and re-establish a guard. The biggest thing I took away was the importance of switching directions and escaping our hips again. Space is the friend of the guy on the bottom.

We also did a variation when the top guy is cross facing you. Much tougher to hip escape with that, so we hook their leg into a half-guard like position, then switch directions and hip escape as normal. It’s very important to not stop once you get to half guard. The top guy’s submission options are much greater there than from mount.

It was getting close to our normal quitting time, but we weren’t getting out without rolling. We broke into groups of 3. 20 minutes in, 10 out. I had Dave and another blue belt. I did pretty good with both guys. LOTS of back and forth, slippery action all around. Submissions are tough in no gi, every time I thought I had something going, I’d loose my grip.