Day 8: Do clothes make the man?

I strutted out onto the mat in my new Koral gi (Thanks, Mary!) with little energy to spare. Jason was quick to spot my new garb and ribbed me playfully and loudly. Class was pretty sparsely attended, so we got right to it.

The technique today was the sweep from the X guard with the opponent standing. Starting in the butterfly guard, control his arm and move one of your legs over onto his opposite knee. Switch hands with the sleeve grip, and turn perpendicular to get an underhook on the leg that your feet are not controlling. Try to get his calf on your shoulder-- you can use your underhook to pull yourself in. Now break his posture, scissor your legs, and roll with him into side control or mount.

I had a pretty easy time with this move, and worked several reps with Mario, Luke, and Jermaine. We also worked it from standing, with a cross crip on the sleeve, collar control with the other hand, pulling right into the butterfly guard.

At sparring time I rolled with Jason first. He's huge-- at least 300 pounds. He let me get position on him and I tried to land an Americana but couldn't. Later I also got in position for a Kimura, and had it set up, but he is very flexible and escaped, and finally made me tap to the "paper cutter" gi choke. I then rolled with Chris, a blue belt who is stocky, compact and very strong. He choked me out twice, pretty quickly-- I forget how. Near the end of the session I invited Luke to roll. We started the same day so we share a sort of kinship-- also he offers a good barometer of my training progression. Unfortunately he is about 160 pounds so it's not entirely fair. He's fast, and I wind up in his guard after every restart. I'm way stronger, so I can pass by getting my knee over his thigh and into side control, which is where I want to be. I got him on an Americana and a Kimura, and almost landed the armbar from the mount. Encouraging, but a little too easy.

For next time, I need to continue to work on my hip escapes and try to actually get opponents into my guard instead of getting sucked into theirs and immediately playing the guard-passing game.