Made it to the academy for the live training session today. The class was pretty big, and all the regulars of the early class were there: Steve, Bryan, Jaime, Benny, Ro, Glenn (I think) ... I got there in time for the specific training (guard/pass guard) and a single roll of live training. But even the 20-30 minutes was well spent in at least a few ways.
One of them was in finally getting to train the deep half guard. At this point, I'm still working on the entries. One trick I noticed was to make sure that you do get too high up in the guy's body when you finish the deep half. The first time I tried it with my sparring partner today, I literally spun him onto my back.
I think that it's helpful to realize how much momentum you can generate with the deep half guard entry, and not to let that momentum carry you too far up the guy's body. Like Jeff Glover says, you should be facing in the same direction, but with the back of your head in his lap. This will make it very hard for the guy to take your back.
Right now, I"m working on the take the back and flip back sweeps. The Homer Simpson, as Glover calls it, is a nice way to gauge the guy's balance (if he looks likely to sit, then use the front hook and flip back - if he's posting and pitched forward, then use the back hook, duck under and lift forward with the hook), but I'm not sure if I like the sweep itself from that position. Again, we'll see.
159.2 on the scale post-train. My first consecutive sub-160 weigh-in all year.
