Friday 4/22 and Sunday 4/24

Friday I had Kris and Steven show up for the beginners class. Worked on more guard breaking and guard passing with a counter sweep. Tried to get them to do some flow rolling, but with Steven involved it always escalates pretty quickly because he still can't calm down.
Kris has made some HUGE strides in relaxing while rolling now. He no longer goes crazy hunting for subs and is really a much more controlled and relaxed grappler from where he was even a month ago. I feel like he's ready to test for his blue belt now for sure. His demeanor has caught up to his ability.

We worked some feet-on-hips spider guard, with I think we are now calling monkey guard just for the sake of being concise, in the main class. Went over the shin block version of the leghook sweep with a couple of different details on it. Then an inverted triangle if the sweep fails. One of my favorite positions to work on.
Rolled with Kris and Steven, but had to do it one handed since I'm still protecting my elbow. Was able to shut Steven down completely because he still wants to substitute speed/strength for technique, but Kris was able to work past my guard and catch me trying to roll out and snag a bow and arrow choke very nicely. With two hands I could have escaped, but there was no way I was going to get out without putting nasty pressure on my elbow. So definitely a legit catch for him.

Sunday
Had 3 of the kids show up for the main class, but no one else. They are 14-16 and all about my size or a little smaller, which is fun. I got them warmed up with some fundamental movement drills and then worked on some of the Self Defense techniques. Escape vs Headlock standing and on the ground, and Escape vs Guillotine standing and on the ground. Had them drill a bunch, then we did some positional sparring starting in full guard. Then rolled for about half an hour. It was nice to get to practice against people my size, even if they aren't super skilled. They are all in good shape and reasonably strong, so I wasn't just flinging them around. I did find a few major differences in how techniques work against people who are my height. My leg positioning has to change for a lot of my spider guard stuff and for my butterfly guard. My whole hook game and my open guard has to change subtly to deal with their lower center of gravity and greater agility. It was very productive for everyone. They learned some good stuff, I got to work my game on people my size. It was an excellent class.