The weather is starting to warm up. It was an easy 10 or 15 degrees warmer on the mat than in the hallway last night.

We split into three groups for warm ups. Frog hops, no pushup burpees, and breakfalls, then running, then triangles, bridges, and hip escapes. 4 minutes each, twice through. Wasn’t so bad, but we certainly got a sweat going.

Damian’s lesson of the day was two DLR passes. Break any grips, pivot to remove their foot from your hip, then do almost a wrestler’s shot to break their grip on your ankle, step to the side and knee slide pass. If they’re holding your pants, or you cant break that ankle grip, instead of stepping away from the DLR hook, you pivot back towards it, get your knee over their thigh, reach for head control, and then flop back. If they secure half guard from here, we switch back again, and end up in 3/4 mount, and finish with an Ezekiel choke.

JR and I drilled. We took it easy with the chokes, as A. Ezekiels suck. B. He’s had a mild concussion.

We paired up for rounds, and had an odd number, so I was out for the first one. Chatted with Damian about the reverse lasso guard techniques, and some other sweeps that tie into the same position.

Rolled with Shane and did good. He was pretty gassed, but I was all over him positionally. Next up was Sarah, and it was a good chance to experiment with the lasso stuff. Got some to work, some needs more. Also got a rolling back take into a RNC.

Class ended, but I wanted another round, so I got Purple Belt Matt. Got footlocked several times, but escaped two, and passed twice. I also hit a nice gramby roll to get back into guard…where he promptly footlocked me. I avoided his Rickson roll tonight. I need to stop stepping so far forward when passing his knee shield. Every time he underhooked my leg and switched to deep half.