At this point in the block the students know what to expect. So we quickly move into our first game.

Game 1: Top player is the active play and they will stay in for 3 minutes. Bottom player will alternate reps. Top player can end the rep in several ways. They can advance to a solidified mount (points scored), they can secure the back (points scored), or they can finish an arm based submission. No chokes. Bottom player works to recover guard or end up on top.

Discussion: The students love the idea of involving submissions, I just wish that meant they would jump on submissions and win. The reality is they still need a lot of time working on winning positions before they will be able to include productive subs. I noticed the colored belts had much more success with submission attempts but still had a relatively low success rate. The colored belts also noticed Guard recovery was significantly easier when top player was hunting for a submission. I still want them to be looking for subs, but the focus needs to be on securing a more dominant position.

Game 2: Repeat of game one, no changes only reinforced the primary goal of advancing position.

Conclusion: This ends our side control top block and I think we had great success with it. I really wish we could lengthen these blocks. Even though this particular section was twice the length of the previous sections it still felt too short. I’m going to work on that in the future especially when it comes to this very important positions. The good thing is we will now move into a side control bottom block, which will give the students lots of time to continue practicing their top position. As we move forward I’ll continue to press the positional dominance, which I fear will become an afterthought as we add in more transitions and submissions. Only time will tell.