Day off, nothing to do…so off to class I went. I’ve never gone to the morning class before. Lots of new faces, but some I knew already too. Big one, 20 guys.

I’m always a little stiff in the mornings, especially the morning after a class. Not as bad as I was 3 or 4 months ago, but still…I’m not as young as I once was!

More matches today. There’s a couple of pretty good looking wrestlers in the morning class, so some of the matches were pretty competitive even before it got to the ground. One intresting stat that got shared was in wrestling, the guy who gets the first take down wins 80%+ of the time. So the lesson of the day was be aggressive! I got matched up with John, a newer guy. Tall, but not heavy. A definite difference from going up against the Mongoose. He tripped me for the take down and started to pass, but I circled my legs in pretty easy. I started with the combo attack of the deep collar grip (for the palm-up/palm-down choke) and controlling his elbow (for the armlock). He jumped up, but made the mistake of letting me get my foot on his hip. I hip push swept him to reverse the position. I stuffed one leg and passed to side control, and immediately mounted. I might of waited to score for the side control before mounting, but he was open so I took it. I got the collar grip and started to get the other side for the choke, but he rolled as I was moving and off balance to escape. I held the choke, and probably would have gotten it, but time was called right after.

Unlike the past couple of nights, we actually did have a lesson today. But Clint taught it. It was similar to a position we learned a couple of weeks ago. Over wrap one arm, and with the same arm get a collar grip. Then you can go to a choke, an elbow crush, or if he drives into you a painful americana variant, or if he defends that the triangle. If he bends his arm and tries to escape, boom…omaplata. So lots of attack options from a pretty basic position. I was paired up with Pat, who seemed like a pretty nice guy, and we ran through them all a few times.