Day 10: Get Some

Tough day at work: meetings, meetings, meetings. Planning to plan. So I was really looking forward to training, even though my toes are killing me.

The drill was escaping from knee-on-belly. Your opponent is on your right, with his right knee on your belly and left knee drawn back adjacent to your head. Grasp his belt with your left hand in the "monkey paw" grip-- it's important you don't get your thumb under his belt or you can be injured. Right hand on his left knee, keeping him from circling his leg around your head. To escape, upa, then hip escape, with pushing pressure on knee and belt so that he can't recover knee-on-belly. Then you can slip a leg in and recover half guard, or scissor your legs to get to your knees (plant the elbow) and try a takedown.

As a companion to this drill we also learned to get knee-on-belly from side control. Simple: do a push up with your hands on the opponent, then slip the knee on and get the head side leg back. Use the back leg to drive your knee into the opponent's gut. Hand control is lapel and belt. It's important to get the leg near the head back for a good base.

I rolled with Bill, an older, lanky, awkward dude. I manhandled him pretty easily, and I didn't learn very much. Got him with an Americana and hit the armbar from mount, which was nice.

Fernando later invited me for another set. I admire the hell out of the guy-- he has some serious guts and he never quits. Definitely qualities I would like to cultivate in myself, nascent as they are. We sparred freely for a while, and Fernando got the better of me with his speed as I avoided using brute strength for passing his guard and getting side control, where he is helpless. He armbarred me once when I got careless. We then decided to do some situational work, which I found very, very useful. I let him start in dominant positions and work his game while I tried to escape. We also worked some sweeps from guard with full resistance, which was great.

I can see that I'm improving, but obviously there's a long way to go. I'm going to continue working on basics, like my hip escapes. Hips, hips, hips.