Went to Taste of Athens today, so didn't do the fundamentals class, but got there at 7pm and Katie was there, so I went over a quick combo with her, armdrag, opponent counters, you let their arm go and kick the leg up for the triangle choke, they posture up, you switch to the armbar. It's a combo I use pretty regularly and it works pretty well. Only had time to drill it with her a few times, but got it in her head and I'll be introducing it in the next no-gi class anyways.
Main class was full of fun stuff. First tech was from side control and was directed at me personally. I'm really good at getting my knee wedged in from bottom of side and getting guard back, so when someone frames on your neck and pushes and drives that knee in, you reach under their arm to the back of their head like you're going for a darce, then step over their head with your top leg and then back step so that you are in side control on the opposite side, ideally with their arm tied up and them unable to turn into you.
Second tech, you wedge the opponents near arm down away from their neck a bit with your body, then push the far arm down a bit (We found that it was equally useful to fake a kimura attempt since it put both of your arms in the right place anyways and kept your opponents mind off of the next step) then wrap your arm back around under your opponents head like you are setting up for a guillotine. Move from side control to north/south, wedging your lat into the opponents neck, then slide down as far as you can, make a fist with your bottom arm, grab it and squeeze everything together. If it doesn't work it usually means you just need to slide further down.
Third tech was an alliance special. Ian McPherson uses this one and variants on it all the time. You are performing the second tech, but your opponent catches on and interposes his arm so that you can't lock your hands up to finish the choke and you can't slide down far enough to get any more pressure. So you grab the tricep of the interposing arm with your free hand (The one not under the opponents head) and move back towards side control, keeping that arm tight. Next you sit out and put your leg across your opponents stomach. At the same time stay locked around their head until you are secure and ready to finish. Next switch to a heel hook style grip on their elbow and lean back and arch your hips. Puts a ton of pressure on the shoulder really quickly. We did a couple of variations of that one, then went to drilling a bit.
Started with one player in side control, I pulled off the Americana from bottom of side control that Zapruder showed me a while back, ended up finishing it in bottom of guard as a half wristlock. The look of utter amazement as the guy tapped to it was priceless, but it's only good one time really. The same guy managed a REALLY nice reversal to my back a little later. Just pulled a move I completely didn't expect from him. After a bit of escaping and subbing folks we switched to rolling at which point I grouped up with Anthony and Kris and went on a No-Gi rampage.
Somewhere in the last couple of months with my improved top game and my increasingly dynamic guard game I've gotten over being gunshy about truly attempting submissions. I had no worries about getting passed if the sub failed, or anything like that. I just dug in, tossed them up, and worked the combos. I ended up landing a stupid quantity of subs in this class whereas normally I've just been working position recently and only taking subs as they appeared. This time around I was making the subs happen. I feel like I've taken another step up in my game and I have very high hopes regarding getting my purple belt this year. Especially if I can get out to Alliance HQ a couple of times a month for a while.
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