Tuesday night was a pretty standard class. Warm-up laps with intervals of leg raises and bicycle kicks. Takedown drills using both the leg-through flip and the "grab and single leg". On that last takedown, the "grab and single leg," it is important to remember to grab the collar that is on the same side. Do not reach across his body.
If I've got this right, then that means that sometimes you are grabbing on the side he has forward, other times you are grabbing on the side he has back. Either way, when you pull/jerk him toward you, he will almost certainly take a step forward to maintain his balance. The leg that steps forward is the one you grab for the single leg takedown, while pushing forward and straightening the arm of the hand that has the collar.
We drilled three techniques. The armbar from the mount. The armbar from the guard. A standing guard pass.
Some notes on the last technique. The basics of the pass are: grab the sleeve and stand. Keep your elbow in tight against your hip. With your other hand, push down on his knee while stepping back with the leg on the same side.
When the guard opens up, take the hand that has been grabbing the sleeve and underhook the leg on that side. Lower your body to go chest to chest and, while doing this, put your outside knee across the guy's leg that is on the ground.
With your other leg you want to do a kickstand, opening your hips to the south, over the down leg. You want to be as close to perpendicular to his body as possible, maintaining your balance and keeping your chest on his. From here, you want to cross over the down leg and switch your hips back to neutral and go into side control.
I want to double check on the actual pass, after you've underhooked the leg. But I think this is how the pass works.
We did a different type of sparring drill. One guy is mounted and needs to submit the guy on top or reverse him. The guy on top needs to submit the mounted guy, basically. I did okay in this drill, not great, not especially good. I got caught in a bicep armlock by Big Mike and it took me an uncomfortably long time to get out of it (I was pretty close to tapping out). I need to remember Saulo Ribeiro's advice for being on top in the mount: weight back and over his hips, knees forward. You don't want to put all your weight on the guy because that gives him more control when he goes to bump. Put your weight on your knees and ride out any attempts to dislodge you.
Also consider switching from mount to S-mount and working the choke/armbar combo attack ...
Tonight's sparring was with Jesse the Blue, Robert, Joe and Tommy. Four rounds without a break. Pretty exhausting, but I think I managed okay. I did spend entirely too much time in Robert's guard without trying more vigorously to pass. I had a nice sweep on Joe from the closed guard--a sweep that was sort of based on the mount-escape-to-half guard that Rodrigo taught us last week and a bit like the first sweep that Rey Diogo shows in his article in the September 2005 issue of Grappling.
The key to the sweep is in grabbing the cuff on one side and grabbing the pants by the knee on the other. You want to step on the hip along with grabbing the cuff (same side). On the pants-grab side, you want to bring your leg up and under his armpit--essentially underhooking his arm. As your leg is getting into position under the armpit, lift up at the knee and turn toward the cuff-grip. He should roll right over almost effortlessly.
After class, Rodrigo was talking about trying to get us to open our guard more, especially in stepping on the hip as a way of getting greater control over the guy in your guard. He also showed us a half-guard sweep. The basic idea behind these sweeps is to free your hips. Rodrigo adds an X-guard like move where you put a hook high around the thigh of the guy on top.
Another note that bears repeating: always turn into the submission attempt when defending!
I figure I was about on par tonight. I'm still not active enough around the guard--either in always standing out of the guard if I'm not doing the Saulo Ribeiro ground pass, or in not going more effectively for the sweep. The sweeps I really want to work on. Right now I've got the scissors sweep and what I'll call the Diogo sweep. I've also got the omoplata sweep in the event that the guy stands, but I wouldn't mind coming up with one or two more.
