Daily Submission

Friday was my first day back after a week and a bit lay off from a sore knee. It was also the first time I rolled no gi since I got back. I rolled with two guys, Chris one of the blue belts, and Andrew who I have known for a long time and actually used to help teach grappling to sometimes. If I haven't mentioned before, blue belts are the highest belts we have next to Adam, who is a black. But they are also Marcus Soares blue belts. Marcus does like giving out belts, he only has like 7 black belts and he is Carlson Gracie's highest ranking student. They are pretty good. I was hoping to do better than the last time I rolled with one of the blue belts because this was no-gi and I am normally harder to finish without a gi.

I did do better but not much. For one, he triangle me and got me in a rear naked choke. Those don't happen often. Because of my wide shoulder, general lack of a neck and strong posture, even if some one locks a triangle on, I can defend it just by posturing up until he loosens up trying to re-adjust. This time he locked it on fast and tight and broke my posture. It was a losing battle. He showed really good arm drags. Adam's advanced students have really good wrestling for BJJ guys.

I had a really good roll with andrew. I outweigh him by a fair amount but he is in awesome shape and used to fighting bigger guys. One of the things, I forgot about no-gi, is just how hard it can be to finish someone. I played a good positional game, had a couple sweeps, took mount a few times but I couldn't finish. We rolled back and forth for like 20 minutes which was a huge step for me because I am finally in grappling shape. I still have to get better but at least I can go for a while.

I also got some help from one of the blue belts with my triangle choke. I don't have the kind of build that allows for easy triangle chokes. I have short, thick legs so I have a hard time. I am determined to get them down, even if it will never be one of my go to moves. One little tip that made all the difference, it seems was putting the opposite foot on the hip. It allowed me to push off to get my hips up and spin to the side to help get my leg across his neck. The other thing was grabbing the shin before you lock the other leg on. Apparently, I have been doing it the old school way ( it did learn more than 10 years ago) which is much harder. I will have to give it some more reps over the next little while.

I have a new goal for the next 4 weeks. Last month was half guard. I have worked almost exclusively on my half guard game and I have seen exponential returns because of it. So I am going to apply that same focus to another part of my game that needs work, my butterfly game. I am going to try to pull butterfly guard almost exclusively and try to become as comfortable as I can in that area. I started friday and I managed 3 sweeps from butterfly guard. Hopefully I can pick it up better over the coming weeks.