MMA and me; day 181

Last day at the gym before the weekend, and it was a good one. We worked on more escapes from bottom side control, and regaining top position. First, bridging up, and creating space to drop your near side elbow to the mat, and keeping the outside edge of the arm on their hip, while shrimping onto your own hip on that same side, and driving your topside knee across their waist, keeping that boot on around their other hip, and your bottom side leg is straight on the mat. Using the arm on their hip as leverage, straighten your top leg out to bring your other leg through, while bringing your head up to a parallel position with their body and reclaim guard. If you can only get to a butterfly hook with that leg, it's fine. It's preferable in fact, because it's much easier to work a sweep from there. For the sweep, arch your hips to bridge and turn with your butterfly hook as the top side, and make sure to have an under hook with the arm on that side as well. Reach over your head at a 45 degree angle with the under hook as you turn, and extend the butterfly hook to pretty simply flip them to their back, and make sure to pass their legs and end in side control, not ending in half guard. The other sweep from this position we covered, was reclaiming full butterfly guard, and getting under hooks with both arms, and getting the head underneath their chin. From here, clasp your hands behind their back with either a Gable grip, or a hand over hand grip (I like this one because it grinds into their lower back, and it's not exactly comfortable) and extend your legs straight out to essentially bend their body backwards. It's a simple task to roll them to either side, and pass to side control, making sure to avoid half guard. We worked on a couple of reversals from bottom side control next. First was a single under hook, where they have more chest pressure than hip pressure. Bridge to create space, and bring the near side arm into that space like before, but this time, reach it all the way under their waist, and grab the far side of their body. From here, bump your hips, and follow the under hook all the way around their body as you slide out, twisting your hips to help pull yourself out from underneath, and transition around to the other side of their body. From here, it's a simple matter of driving them to their back by reaching across their waist to grab their knee with one hand, and behind them to grab their ankle with the other hand, suck it in to your body while driving your shoulder into them to knock them over, and end in side control. The other reversal, was bumping up to create space, and getting both arms under, continuously bumping the hips to drive the arms through until you have double under hooks across their waist and chest. Keep working until you have your hands on their back, and then brign your knees to your chest and in one motion, explode your hips up while pushing your arms straight back. Swivel your hips to turn to your knees, and keep moving around to the far side of their body, and then drive them to their back to complete the reversal. A great week of classes, and can't wait to get back to it on Monday!