OBMA: Day 4

Another solid day for the project. Today was takedowns mostly working from the russian 2 on 1 grip, which I never use, so I spent a lot of the time working with Kris on gi grips, grip breaking, foot sweep combos, and the very non-wrestling standup game we both use.

Started out rolling with Kris and continued to be assertive with my gripping and execution, he felt a bit less intense today than he usually does so I think he might have been backing it down a notch due to the heat and humidity in the gym. I hit a bunch of sweeps to KoB and executed my baseball bat choke. My assertiveness and determination to complete sweeps was leading me to combos that I had worked on before but never really was able to put into practice. I used x-guard or x-guard variation sweeps, the hook sweep, and some others that I am now too tired to remember.
Also rolled with a bigger guy that trained with us before, but was gone for a while. Went immediately to my standard big guy game and omoplata, swept to mount, worked for bow and arrow, then transitioned to his back. Ended up just riding it out on his back and refusing to be shaken off while working for the choke.

Rolled with a new guy that turns out to have a lot of previous wrestling experience. He was preposterously strong, so right off he tried to canopener the hell out of me, then head crushed me. I tapped to the headcrush real quick before my nose could get too smashed, then loop choked him immediately. After the reset I was setting up the loop choke again and he performed a very ballistic sitout that turned it into a kimura, which only didn't wreck my arm because I was lucky and was already going that direction. Rolled through it, and he head crushed me again. Tapped and then pulled him into full guard and x-choked him on the restart.  After that I just held him in guard until the round ended while he tried to canopener me repeatedly.

At that point it got hard to continue my assertiveness due to exhaustion, but I did what I could.

I also have noticed that I am trying to pass the knee shield the same way no matter what size my opponent is. I need to adjust that so that on the stronger guys I back out and work to generate an agility advantage instead of trying to pressure pass through them. I can do that on guys my size, or inexperienced bigger guys, but bigger blue or purple belts it just isn't the appropriate passing method for the situation.

At the end I rolled with Kris again, and as our like 7 minute long round ended, Johnny called for a points match again starting from where we were with me under side control. I spend about 6 minutes playing full on defense unable to muster any kind of offense until I regained guard and at some point accidentally clipped Kris in the face with my knee.

Still it was continued progress mentally and I'm pretty happy with this project so far.