slideyfoot.com | bjj resources

 Home
 Contact
 Reviews
 BJJ FAQ  Academy

This website is about Brazilian jiu jitsu (BJJ). I'm a black belt who started in 2006, teaching and training at Artemis BJJ in Bristol, UK. All content ©Can Sönmez

22 December 2015

22/12/2015 - Open Mat | Back to Sparring

Class #686
Artemis BJJ (MYGYM Bristol), Open Mat, Bristol, UK - 22/12/2015

After neck/shoulder injuries, a new tattoo and a spate of illness, it feels like I haven't sparred properly in ages. Today I finally had a good long spar, thanks to an old training partner popping down for a daytime roll. It was really good to get on the mat with him again, as I always got a lot out of our rolls. In some ways not much has changed: he still has a tricky spider guard and I still rely heavily on heavy pressure side control, without be able to do much beyond maintain once I get there.

Still, I do at least have a few other things to go for now, particularly gi tail stuff. I was looking to either wrap up his arm to try for an americana off the gi tail, or turn it into a choke. I should have tried for the gi tail baseball bat variation, but was overly timid. Closest I got to something was moving into the step over triangle, but I didn't have his arm hooked properly. He could therefore wriggle it back out again, so I bailed and brought the knee back for base.

I also thought about going for the arm, but again was too concerned about losing position. As soon as I gave him an inch, he was looking to get a knee into my arm to push it back down, then progress into either a sweep or a guard recovery. The first few times I was able to create some slack and work my elbow back to his far hip, but he eventually got me and I think either reversed from there or in guard. Either way, I found myself on the bottom.

Under there, I was looking for sit-up escape stuff from Rockwell again. I also kept coming up on my elbow to get more comfortable with that position. If I can nail that transition it should make everything else easier. At present it still feels like I takes a good bit of energy to keep coming up. I'm wondering if I could use a short block instead, so the elbow and upper part of my arm rather than the whole arm. May not create enough distance though: I'll keep playing with it.

No comments:

Post a Comment