My left quad, right where it connects to the groin muscles, is killing me. I’ve got a little limp, but where it really gets me is when I try to lift my left leg up—as when doing leg lifts or butterfly sweeps. For better or worse, I don’t do too much of either when rolling, so the short-term impact—beyond a little discomfort—is likely to be minimal.
The relevance of all that is the fact that the next Copa Northwest—Copa 9, to be specific—is scheduled for February 3rd. As in the Saturday after next.
I won’t pretend that I wouldn’t love a month of normalcy, a month where no dogs are dying, no power outage is taking place, no mini ice age, no cruise to Mexico, no imploding bathroom floor, no flu, no collapsing fence, no flowers left anonymously in the front yard … But you go to war with the month you’ve got. And it looks like I’ll only get a few weeks of regular training before stepping back on to the mat as a competitor.
More thoughts on this later in another post. Right now I’ve got a little catching up to do with the instruction from Rodrigo’s Thursday night no gi class and Mamazinho’s gi class last night. As much as I like writing about gameplanning and jiu jitsu in general, I don’t want the blog to get too far away from one of its original purposes: to chronicle the instruction I get at Gracie Barra Seattle.
Thursday
Rodrigo had us working on some interesting things. First up was a balance drill where one guy held your leg, first at the ankle and then at the knee. First the guy walked you backward down the mat, forcing you to hop backwards and maintain your balance. Then, rather than turning around, you do the same thing back up the mat, forcing you to hop forwards. A good drill—though I can’t help but wonder if this is where things started to go downhill for my quadriceps.
We moved on to techniques. The first one was an escape from the leg trap. Say that somebody has shot in for a single leg, or an ankle pick and they’ve got your leg—more or less in the same way that we just drilled. How do you escape?
It depends on where their head is. If their head is on the inside, then you want to do the following:
--turn and drop down driving your knee to the mat
--as you do this you are turning and facing in the opposite direction
--push the head and posture back, putting your weight on his shoulder as you drop down
--kick your leg forward to break the grip
If the guy’s head is on the outside, then instead of turning away, you want to turn into him
--reach down with your inside arm between his two arms trapping your leg
--reach down between the guy’s legs
--reach around with your outside arm and lock your hands
--work your body around toward his back or for the takedown
We also worked a half guard pass. It is one that Rodrigo showed us before, but one that I haven’t used nearly enough (then again, it is usually me on the bottom in half-guard …).
The half-guard pass is designed to free the knee. You hook the head with your inside arm. Then backstep over his body (it is a little bit of a backwards leap). As you backstep, keeping walking your body backwards toward his head. This more than anything else will do the hard work of freeing your knee. As Saulo would say “don’t poosh the guy”. You don’t want to push on the guy’s knee so much as you want to leverage the knee to help you walk your body backwards toward the head. Again Saulo: “We move our bodies.”
From where swing back into a mount position. You might still have your lower leg trapped, but it will be risky for the guy to focus on maintaining that quarter-guard (don’t I know it!)
The next two techniques Rodrigo showed us were similar to moves that Marcelo Garcia uses quite a lot. The first is what I called the “knee sweep.” The second is the “X-guard” or what Rodrigo called the “cross guard” sweep.
The knee sweep is used when a guy tries to stand up against your butterfly or sitting guard. You are in butterfly or sitting guard with your back on the mat (a no-no, but it happens). The guy is on both knees looking to stand up and pass.
You are trying to control the wrists (remember Marcelo’s point “they try to pass with their hands”). When the knee goes up, grab the ankle with the hand on that side, and flare your leg on that side with your shin in the crook of the guy’s knee. Your other hand should be attacking or controlling the opposite wrist.
Pull on the ankle and push out with the knee. One detail that Rodrigo pointed out was tha the knee should be pointing out at 45 degrees, not straight up.
You can also push with the outside hand on the guy’s wrist. It is a sort of pull-push when it works well. Scissor your legs in the sitting-guard-to-standing style (Mike remembered that this was the same movement that Rodrigo used to drill a lot. I need to incorporate it more into my warming up, again.)
The cross guard sweep goes like this. You start from a similar position as the knee sweep. But this sweep comes into play when the guy stands up. You put the first knee in as above (or you might already have it in place). You swing over to the “free” or outside leg and underhook that so that the crook of the guy’s knee is on your shoulder.
At the same time you take your other leg and make the cross. You hook in front of the thigh—high up, almost at the groin—but your knee should be behind the guy.
Extend your legs to break the guy’s posture. To finish the sweep, you want to come up on your inside knee and hand. It is better to follow through and stand up—that will make for a more effective sweep. But the sweep can be done from the ground if you want to remain on your knees.
That’s it for the instruction. I rolled with Rodrigo for about ten minutes. I’m doing a better job in general of using the sitting guard and fighting off the hands. I still get gripped, but I’m surprised at how with just a little more effort, I can make it frustrating enough for a lot of folks—especially blue belts like myself and lower.
After class my hips were killing me. I remember reading a post somewhere on some message board that said when you start jiu jitsu, your arms hurt all the time. But once you start to figure out what you’re doing, it is your hips that hurt. Maybe it’s a good omen, after all.
