Journal Entry: The Cobra Hold

May 14, 2014

There was a good mixture of skill levels at BJJ tonight. 7 souls in total. 3!blue belts (myself included), 2 seasoned white belts, and 2 newbs. We started off class with Lockflow 12. I seem to flow it pretty nicely. I need to focus on smoothing out the transition from the triangle choke to the shoulder lock. We also practiced Lockflows 10 and 8. They are pretty good.

Rolling was fun. I tried to work on shutting down the speed of the smaller man in roll one. I used my weight and strength advantage to guide him in to advantageous positions. It worked ok and I finished a nice head and arm choke.

Roll 2 I tried to focus on feeling where my opponent wanted to guide me. I tried to feel his center of gravity and his momentum. I was able to finish a “cobra hold” from top half guard!  He seemed pretty impressed and surprised. He’s a lot better than me, so any time I get the tap, it feels good. The “cobra hold” is above…  It’s very painful hold. The rest of the roll was ok.  I got caught in a couple of strangles, but defended well against the leg attacks.

Roll 3 I had my way with a white belt.  I worked at trying to move my hips.  I started from disadvantage and visualized my way from escape, to position, to submission.  It worked quite well.  I made a couple technical errors, but finished all but one submissions I wanted.

My final roll was with a high level white belt.  I was pretty tired.  I wanted to take a break but he didn’t have an opponent so I went in.  I spent most of my time in  disadvantaged position.  I worked to breath and relax and wait for my moment to explode and sweep or reverse position.  I had several sweeps from side control and several from bottom half.  I was too tired to work for submissions.  lol  He did a pretty good job of setting up guillotines and anacondas, but ultimately couldn’t finish them on me.  I made fun of him for that.  🙂

Even though it was a good night and I was fairly happy with my flows, I couldn’t help but feel like I didn’t want to be there.  I’m just not motivated…

The end.