Ugh, playin defense

Showed up a few minutes late today and missed most of the warmup. Technique was halfguard stuff.
Halfguard to a kimura setup that worked by pushing out to long range half, getting the kimura grip, then sitting out to full guard to finish.
Next up was the same shrimp to LRH, go for the kimura, but your opponent pulls the arm out, so you scoop under their leg and go for X-guard, but end up in failed x-guard. With both knees in front and your top foot behind your opponents thigh, lift with that top foot and scissor the legs as you pull the far arm towards you to execute the sweep, then either backstep pass to side control or transition to the kneebar.

Pairing up for drilling I was with the lightweight side of the room, starting from halfguard to sweep or submit from the bottom. I played fairly relaxed and let folks work and then eventually swept them or passed for the most part. There was a new guy there so I let him work out and escape the first time, then squished him and passed the second time. He seemed to be having fun. I showed him my go-to halfguard sweep.

After that rolling with Ian and Brian. Ugh, rolling with them is WORK. Brian is only 170, maybe 180 on a fat day, but he has really long limbs and really good base and is extremely athletic. He's been doing Muay Thai for years and has several ammy fights already. He's ready for his blue belt skill wise, but his technique library is a little light since he mostly just does a handful of things extremely well. Ian is a 200lb blue belt that is also extremely strong and athletic. So I spent most of my time playing super defense and looking for any small opening. I managed to trick Ian into a sort of overhead sweep variation, but couldn't lock down mount and he managed to toss me back and end up back in my guard. Ended up close to an rather unorthodox armlock from bottom of north south turtle. Almost got it, but Brian is just too strong for any shenanigans like that to work. He's also picked up the single collar choke that I keep using and is now going for it all over the place. I'll probably grab him next week some time and show him some tips for finishing it. He also can openered me twice, once from my guard so I just dropped guard and switched to feet on hips, but the second was from inside my triangle choke. I usually base my forehead on my knee to prevent this, but I slipped to the side and actually slapped him in the eye tapping because of the pressure on my neck.
I spent a LOT of time just using feet on hips and sleeve grips to keep them both at bay. Definitely not as much pure fun as rolling with the guys my size, but valuable for sure.