Class 53...

Today's class started with quite a light warm-up but the rest of it was quite demanding as we were drilling basic control positions from half guard and this was tough.

We were split into threes and we did two sets of three five-minute rounds so the first guy in the middle essentially stayed there and on the bottom for the full five minutes while the other two people alternated in attacking him from half guard. The second guy of the three then went in for five minutes and so on. The winner was the guy who secured head control or who swept or submitted his opponent.

I was OK at the attacking part of this... once I figured out that head control was the thing we were drilling and once we'd established this it made sweeping or submitting or escaping guard much easier. But my defending wasn't great and too often I'd allow myself to be in a bad position before really trying to act or escape, which was then obviously too late.

It was a great exercise, though, as it exposed a key thing I need to work on: defending a neutral position and not surrendering it too easily for a worse one. One thing one of my opponents did was use his head to push down to help him secure head and arm control whne he was attacking, while the other one was very good at getting his knee and arm between me when I was attacking and using this as a frame to defend himself.

In sparring I go paired with two newish people and I suddenly found that I had been making some progress as I relaxed and quite gently rolled and just let them put themselves into bad positions, which allowed me to apply a guillotine choke from half-guard, an armbar from mount, a kimura from full guard, an Americana from side mount and two kimura sweeps from open guard in quick succession.

Obviously this was no type of victory as it was against relatively inexperienced people and I wasn't going out to defeat people but just to see what happened, but it maybe also means I'm not quite so inexperienced and not quite as bad as I think when rolling with more experienced students and higher belts. And that's good to know as it means I'm not totally wasting my time doing this...

LESSON FROM TODAY: Fight for head control; use your knee and arm to create a defensive frame against an opponent on top; use your head to pressure an opponent down.