I was stiffer than expected yesterday. Been a while since I’ve ran, and I felt it. I think I’ll try a longer and/or colder soak after my next one.

Our warm up was mercifully short. But we spent an extended amount of time drilling some judo throws. We started with osoto gari. Open their arms, jab step in, then turn them while kicking your leg back and taking theirs out.

What if they anticipate the throw and step back? We shuffle step in and then foot sweep them with the ko soto gari.

Ron, Officer Jason, and I rotated while we drilled.

On Saturday I put in a technique request to Damian. We spent all of last week covering half guard passes, but didn’t address two variants that I struggle with, the knee shield and half butterfly. So, that’s what we did last night.

The knee shield pass was very slick. It starts normally. Break grips, weave in our hand and pin his bottom knee down. Either get a collar grip, or pin his bottom hand down too. Then the magic…pressure in against his knee shield, he’ll push back, and we switch our hand from pinning his knee to cupping his top thigh. We release the pressure and basically leg drag that knee out of the way, and establish head control. We can finish the pass a variety of ways.

For half butterfly, we pinch his butterfly leg, pinning it to ourselves. Then we grip his other knee and shuffle towards the butterfly hook. Grip the butterfly leg at the knee, and dive for head control while kicking our leg up and over. I don’t “get” why this one works, I think I’ll have to play with it.

For rounds, we did 3 nine minute rounds. I had Ron, Shae, and Gilberto. Did okay with Ron. Threatened Shae some. Struggled a bit with Gilberto, but had some moments. He told me after class that my defense and control was good, but he’d catch me during the transitions between positions.