Friday night

In our Friday night class we added onto stuff we learned at the seminar last week.

Starting from mount, we have our partner's left arm in an upward figure 4. Instead of going for that submission (of if we can't get it), we bring our arms across his neck, block his elbow with our chest and then reach around the back of his neck with our right hand for an armwrap. We dismount into a low kneeride. Then we reposition our left hand to also grab his trapped forearm. Then we do the boat ramp: as we sit on our but, we pull him up towards our chest and across our right leg and end up in back control with both hooks in.

From there, we look for the RNC. However, if he tries to pull our right arm down (for the drill that's what our partner did), we use our right leg to clamp over the arm to trap it. If possible, we cross the left leg over the right at the ankles. Now it's possible to use both of our arms against his left arm. Bringing our right arm to the left side of his neck, we grab his left wrist and figure four it with our left arm. Once that's in place, we can push on his head with our right hand while pushing down with our legs. This will push him down and across. Lastly, we bring our right leg across the front of his face, and as his left arm is already trapped in the crook of our left elbow, an armbar is easy.

A new guy turned up, and we took turns in pairs to show him basic drills. Watching him struggle and sweat reminded me of how hard I found it when I started :-).

We mostly drilled this set, first in stages, then the whole thing. After that, we did a bit of free rolling. I wasn't very successful, getting caught in an armbar, a triangle, a figure four from headlock etc. Nothing seemed to work for me. The best thing that happened was when I managed one escape from a bad position under a heavy blue belt guy, who commented "good!" for my effort. Only to regain his position and squash the breath out of me while he casually put on a figure four...

I was not impressed with myself, feeling like I was walking into the same submissions and not doing as well as I should. Near the end of open mat, one of the senior guys asked me for a roll. He asked if there was something specific I wanted to work on. Feeling down, I said I was getting stuck in stuff over and over but not to worry. We had a bit of a chat where I'm at. Most others had left by then and another guy came over. Then they spent the next 20 minutes giving me advice and examples on starting from knees and turtle escapes and attacks. That was terrific. I felt terribly guilty taking their time and I would have been happy to watch them roll and learn from watching. But I really appreciate their help. It is fantastic to see how much interest people take in helping others in our school. I guess as we all get better together, we enhance each other's learning. And I get my turns helping others with less experience.