BJJ 2/13/2011

Fundamentals class:
Good class, Ian the blue belt brought his kid and one of his kids friends along and my buddy Will was there.We reviewed preventing the guard pass by pushing the head down and executing a technical stand, the we talked about receiving well when someone passes your guard or attempts to take mount. I had them drill framing against each other while they passed and then pulling the knee up to create a frame when one of them tried to take mount.
After working on that for a bit I had them do some jiujitsu chess trying to reinforce the idea of THINKING while they are rolling. Had a brief QA session at the end and went back over some off the no-gi attacks with the overhook from a few weeks ago.

Main Class:
We were all pretty much warmed up, so we moved right to techniques. Casey decided to teach a "What Fedor Did Wrong" themed class so first up was catching the opponents leg in halfguard when they move to mount (One of the options I had just shown, YAY!) and then getting the underhook, hipping out, and sweeping. Then going to deep half and sweeping by grabbing the foot with the top hand, driving forward a bit, then rolling back the other way. And finally halfguard where your opponent is laying across you working to pass and you frame on his back, and shrimp to a technical stand, or if they chase you, suddenly crossface and roll them.
We drilled from halfguard and I spent the entire time trying to reinforce to the younger guys that they need to use the stuff we JUST LEARNED because it works. They tend to be a little spazzy and apparently have the impression that techniques work if you go FASTER and TRY HARDER. I had to stop them a couple of times and make them just slow down and do the technique properly instead of just trying to move faster.

Rolling was a 5 man gauntlet with Me, Will, Ian, Coe and Casey. Somehow I ended up not rolling with Casey at all, but I was able to enforce my top game on everyone else, including Coe the 220lb purple belt. He initiated a scramble early on and I took his back, flattened him and worked the RNC for a bit, he defended it and tried to peel me off, I transitioned to side control, and then to north south, and generally kept him from putting anything together while I constantly threatened chokes. We'll see how that works out for me next week when he steps up the pace a little.

Good class though, teaching the fundamentals class is really making me think about those little things that make my jiujitsu work and it seems to be helping the other people that are attending as well.