I can escape my own guard...

Monday night hooray! Rain and thunderstorms hooray! Rain coming in the windows. Hooray?

There's a girl in class. How unusual. That'd be the first time for fundamentals, although I believe there's been 2 or 3 different girls lined up for the big kids class afterwards a few times. My first impression is that this girl is not new. Turns out that I'm right, because she knows some of the guys from the big kids class who are hanging around.

Warmups. No Dale. Who stole Dale? John runs his own warmup, which is actually mildly like exercise tonight. Running around the mat. Running around the mat while touching the mat with your hands. My back disapproves. Running on the spot, with sprawls. Burpee-sprawls. Whoo. It's hot in here with all the windows closed and 90% humidity. Hip escapes and switchouts down the mat to finish warming up.

John has a 4-stripe white belt in a purple gi as a grappling dummy tonight. His name is Liam. I don't know why I remember that, I usually forget names instantly. It could be because he's a 4-stripe white belt in a purple gi. We don't exactly have many of those in fundamentals.

To side control, where we drill Figure 4s, Up-and-crush Kimuras and the other-Kimura-that-I-suck-at. Paired up with Lee, who still had a dodgy shoulder. Did I mention I suck at that other Kimura? Really. Got a 'good' from John while doing the up-and-crush version though. I'm sure I remember being crap at that one last week, but it worked great this week.

I've worked out the terminology too. There's no such thing as an Americana. An Americana is a figure 4. A Kimura is actually still a Kimura. It only took a couple of months....

Side control escape, same as last week. Seem to have this one working nicely in drills too. Lee messes his up a few times before working it out again.

1-minute rounds from side control. Underneath first, and I still don't think I'm getting my hips out far enough. Interrupted once by proximity to a wall while I was reasonably close to getting a leg through. Half-managed the escape and ended up in a weird semi-scramble position which most definitely wasn't me under side control because I was sitting up. Re-set and the round ends.

On top. The exposed arm is Lee's dodgy shoulder, so no trying to rip it off, although I did try to get the set-up for the figure 4 just for entertainment value. Lee is getting coaching from John.. "bridge!".. and at one stage I end up with my foot on the wall using it for bonus leverage. Amusing. Lee gets up on his side near the end of the round, and I zip around to north-south, which he doesn't react to, so I got the rest of the way around to his back. Time.


Drinks break, and then we're doing more drills. Side-control escape to guard, then the escape-your-own-guard drill. Amusing. We only do this for about 2 minutes before John decides we're going to do 1 minute rounds of escape-your-own-guard drill. This is particularly silly for the guy on top, because having just been told that it's ideal to posture up when you're in guard, the only option to prevent your partner escaping his own guard is to keep your head jammed onto his chest. Clever. Still good exercise though.

Drills from guard on how to break your partners posture, assuming that they're up straight with their hands high on your chest. Basically scoop your arms under theirs and scoop them off your chest to the side while pulling them forwards with your legs. End up ideally with one hand on the back of the neck, and the other over their arm and gripping at just above the elbow. Lee kept ending up with his arm under mine, and I actually have no idea how.


Time for a new technique. A technique from guard.....? Hooray! How excitement! The technique in question is another Kimura. Starting with opponent postured up in your closed guard, break their posture. Use your legs to push them lower down your body, then open your guard and wriggle backwards until you can sit up a bit. Turn a little bit onto your side towards the side where you're gripping their arm, while sliding your arm down to their wrist. Sit up more while reaching over with your other arm, shove their head the other way as you reach over to get the normal Kimura grip. Roll back onto your other hip, bring your top leg (same side as the arm you're attacking) up onto their back as you roll them forward while bending their arm back.

That's a relatively crap description, but I know what I mean and it actually felt pretty natural. No time for anything else tonight after we finished drilling. Class seemed really short, and definitely nowhere near as strenuous as Wednesday last week, but damn is it warm with the windows closed!

More guard stuff on Wednesday. Sweet.