open mat Thursday

Thursday night was open mat.

For a warmup, I had a few slow rolls with a guy I knew I could help. So we stopped often and went over stuff. We also revised a sweep which we'd been shown a few weeks ago that he had trouble with.

We went no gi after that. I had several rolls with one of the blue belts. We didn't go full on, but not really slow either. I had ample time to try for things, and surprised myself with never running out of things to do and places to go. Once I even went from an armbar attempt to a figure four, just because it was there looking at me. Ok, I got my grips mixed up for a second, but soon had that sorted and it was a goer. Other than that, I was hunting for figure fours from top and bottom. I think I managed a sweep in there somewhere. I'm certainly using my feet to hook, push and pull independently of my arm. A couple of times we stopped and he showed me how to make an adjustment to improve something, mostly the sweeps.

I had a couple of rounds with one of the purple belts after that. One round ended swiftly because I did something dumb (as I do..). One round was ho-hum and all weird and mixed up positions which we had to abandon because we rolled into someone.

Eventually, we had one long round with lots of good stuff. I managed to get straight to half guard top and avoided his underhooks for a bit, and when he got them, I must have been effective in my control of his head, because he coldn't get me off. I managed to get to mount and was doing a reasonable job peeling his elbow out. I was experimenting with using a foot on his hip, and that sort of worked. Anyway, couldn't finish that and eventually he rolled me. I used my knees well, and easily got guard or at least half guard back several times through the roll. Used half guard bottom effectively and went hunting for arms from there. Somehow or other we rolled over and I trapped an arm plus I saw a crucifix. Only I couldn't figure how to effectively threaten his near arm. And as there was no collar to choke him with, eventually he got out of that. That's about all I remember. It finished with me getting armbarred, I think. But it was great because I had so many opportunities to go for things. And I seemed to have a lot of time to think. I sometimes made little adjustments, like when we were fighting for who would get a foot in where. The best thing was that he said he enjoyed the roll and I made him work really hard.

Looks like I'm back to enjoying myself thoroughly.