I paired up with Rob a four strip white belt for the first technique of the evening which was a sweep against an attempted guard pass. I’ve been meaning to ask Rob if he had ever trained at Yoshin Ryu as he looked very familiar and following the roll that I had with him last week I was convinced he had as he used the same technique to pass my guard as he done when we did Newaza and that was the stack pass. It turns out that he has been training at both places for a few months now.
Back to last night’s technique, I start on my back with Rob in my closed guard. He stands up in an attempt to break open my guard and I underhook his left leg with my right arm and drive my hips in to his knee, which pushes him on to the floor. All the while I keep hold of his right arm with my left arm. From there I raise my hips and drive the shin of my left leg behind his neck, whilst pulling on his right arm and rotate clockwise in to him and end up in an armlock. It sounds complicated and looks complicated but after a few pointers from Tim, one of the black belts, I had this technique down.
Ricardo go us doing a guard pass drill where one person starts in the closed guard of another. It’s the person on tops job to pass the guard whilst the person on the bottom has to defend by sweeping, submitting or catching the other person in half guard. We played winner stays on.
At first I was one of the people trying to pass guard and my first two attempts didn’t go well. On my third go against another white belt I managed to pass his guard and get to side control. Now it was my turn to start on my back and from here I had quite a bit of success as I managed a perfect flower sweep on one person and then another sweep which is the first one shown here.
I stayed on for another couple of goes before Ricardo called time and told us to take a quick water break before we started sparring.
I managed 5 rolls in total, all but one were against fellow white belts. The one non-white belt I rolled with was a blue belt that I managed to hold down for a while, switching between mune gatame, Kesa gatame and Kezure kesa gatame. I was actively looking for a submission but I knew that as soon I went for one he would escape. However I am here to learn BJJ not to sit there in a pin and feel comfortable so I went knee on belly and tried to mount him (Tate-shiho-gatame). Unfortunately he took this opportunity to escape to half guard and eventually managed to sweep me but I regained full guard and remained in this position until the buzzer went.
My other rolls, against white belts, went pretty well with me being largely dominant and attacking with sweeps and submission attempts. The only time I was in trouble was my last roll when I was very tired having had no rest in-between.
The class finished with Ricardo making us do two minutes of knee jumps, press-ups and squats. The two minutes was actually more like four as he kept adding on time when someone didn’t jump high enough or do their press ups properly. Another tiring but very enjoyable session.
