During the king of the guard drill, I managed to pass the guard of a guy who'd already had a sesion or two on the bottom. The first guy I get is this huge new guy who's been coming pretty regular over the past few weeks. It will be interesting to see how good he gets if he sticks around.
Anyway, he enters my guard and immediately throws a can opener on me. I decide to try and defend it rather than tell him that can openers are not a technique he should be practicing for a variety of reasons. Probably not so smart because this guy might outweight me by seventy or more pounds.
Anyway, Rodrigo tells him to drop the can-opener and we continue for a little while. I'm not going to bother trying to sweep him, I managed to scramble to my feet and away he goes.
The next guy was a new guy who was pretty tough. He eventually managed to pass my guard after I'd tried a lot of different sweep attempts. I was mostly going for "knee pick" sweeps, and couldn't get enough momentum to take him over. I've really got to think about my grips and hooks with no gi. I like the fact that I tried to be aggressive from the guard with sweeps and then attacking with the triangle when I get the opportunity. I threw a triangle on that new guy after awhile, but wasn't able to finish the job.
My big mistake was in not going immediately to the choke side knee to get the angle, and then zoom in on the head. My whole triangle defense (which worked twice tonight) is based on putting the choking leg on the mat. By hooking the choke side knee, you make it a lot harder for the defender to put your choking leg on the mat. You've got the angle on him.
I've got a half suspicion that getting the angle is more important for guys with relatively short legs than it is for guys with relatively long legs. If you can get your legs around the guy fairly easily, then that creates a certain amount of leverage--or potential leverage. But if your ankles are tight against the guy's back as you are attacking with a triangle, then your legs have little leverage. On their own, it's leg strength against the guy's capacity to posture up.
So hook that choke side leg. Look down your knee as if you were a sniper.
This was supposed to be a post about a counter to the can opener. Here's the counter. Courtesy of Lockflow. I don't imagine I'll get a lot of practice using it. But it's nice to know.
Now, back to searching for no gi ways to open the guard ...
