Daily Submission

A little late on this one but better late then never. Rolled no-gi last thursday. Prior to class I spent about 20 minutes working on my shot. I don't get to drill it enough. The speed is coming back now I need to start training it with a partner. Technique wise we worked off the arm drag in butterfly guard. The first technique was the armdrag to the back. It can be seen here:



Incidently, the guy being demoed on is Stephan Kesting who, like my coach Adam, is a Marcus Soares Black Belt. His stuff is great, check out grapplearts.tv for more.

Then we worked a simple counter. When he arm drags, we post that arm and hope over to the other side, landing in side control.

Next was a re-drag counter, which ended up with the guy on top taking his partners back. Tough to explain. Basically, as he tries to take your back, you re-drag his arm and slip behind him. I can't explain it more because I still suck at it.

So on to rolling. Rolled with this dude Dan, who I don't really know. I think he started at the gym during my absence and he comes on different days then me. So basically, I had no idea what to expect. He was pretty good. I had my wrestling shoes on since I was practicing my shot earlier and I somewhat made a transition back to wrestler. Not a bad thing really as I almost never rely on my wrestling. He was good. His half guard was sick. I have posted on my half guard phase and how I focused on it exclusively for like a month. I have a pretty decent handle on it. He was on another level. Sweep me twice with it, even though I saw it coming. Hit a nice flower sweep on me, which is difficult because I have a pretty good base. Tapped me a few times, once with a darce.

I felt I did OK. I got his back once, passed his guard once. I really had to focus on my defensive game. Spent a lot of time on the bottom in a front head and arm. I hit my spin out (armspin) once but he stuff all the rest of my tricks. My peek outs were good but not good enough. I managed to shut down his darce attempts for a long time before he finally hit it.

But the bottom line was I got my butt kicked. I felt a little better after talking to Adam. I had asked if Gavin one of our senior Blues was up for his purple any time soon. He said after Dan. As far as he was concerned he was a purple already, he was just waiting on Marcus. So I got beat by a (almost) purple belt. No shame in that.

Daily Submission

Was sparring tonight and I think Crazy Monkey Defense is finally clicking for me. For the first round I was really focusing on keeping the CM structure tight and cycling my elbows. I think I got hit like three times. Once I started to realize how safe I was, I let my offensive open up. I got crowd him and I landed some real solid combinations.

One thing my partner mentioned was that I was, in effect, elbowing his hands. He could feel them through the 14 ounce gloves we were using.

For the jits practice, I got to work a little X guard which I don't do that often. We worked of a butterfly sweep where the guy posts his leg to prevent the sweep. You transition to X guard and sweep him back, then moving to side control. I will try to post a video of it a little later. It is a slick little sweep and I found it pretty simple.

I am a celebrity!!

Ok, I am not even a minor, failed reality show contestant level, celebrity but I did find my name popping up on fighter profile sites the other day. Here I am at MMA core
http://www.mma-core.com/fighters/_Tony_Manifold?fid=109647
and Sherdog
http://www.sherdog.com/fighter/Tony-Manifold-29259

And here is a little 16 second clip from the fight they mention