11.16.08 #74.6

No Gi with Ferret

We have continued to work our series that includes the arm bar, shoulder-lock, triangle and sweep. Ferret should be another sick set up this week that is more of our traditional set up, but with a small change. Instead of actually going to the back of the head with the right hand, you sell that you are going for it, then karate chop into your opponent's trapped arm. From there you take your left hand to the back of their head from this you can jump directly to arm bar or jump the shoulders. If both of those fail, you can then move in to the pendulum sweep. The move is slick. Ferret caught me good when he demonstrated it. I was impressed. As you can see it has been almost two weeks since I last trained. I am a half block away from GT at the new job and need to make time to get over there to train.

11/2/08 #73.5

As you can see I didn't manage to get to class this week. Gotta love the new schedule, it ROCKS!

Did get Ferret to meet me on Sunday because I was asked to work. I know, right? If I have to drive to Tampa on Sunday, I might as well train. Ferret was nice enough to meet me on short notice.

Training started like last week with the shoulder jump. Ferret is trying to get me to make a more aggressive jump - bring my hips to my opponent and hang on, forcing them to deal with the weight plus the aggressive squeeze. He also showed me a new way to set it up, by using the right hand underneath or across the opposite arm. It is a different set up and thinks that it may allow for a little more success in the shoulder jump, so something I can try this week if my schedule will allow.

From there, we went back to guard passes. We keep working on this double elbow pass (for lack of better words) and that has lead to different variations of passes from our standard pass to a knee through pass that can bring you to knee on belly, our half guard pass, etc. Ferret is just trying to help me get my timing back, but also allow me to develop a stronger foundation with some of the basics.