A good night on the mat: laps, several sets of 50 crunches, four sets of 25 pushups and line throws for warmup. Then some work against the turtle defense. Mamazinho showed us a shoulder roll to transition the guy from turtle to rear-mounted that requires reaching under both arms and getting a tight grip on the collars. That, and watching your head when you go into the roll.
He also showed us the basic wrestler’s sit-out for when you are in the turtle defense and the guy on top has you around the waist. You want to grab the wrist to trap the arm on one side and, on that same side, post a leg out. Grab the pants by the knee on the other side. Now, sit out by shooting your pants-grab-side leg between your posted leg and the guy. As you do this, keep your head tucked tight against his body as you shoot under and around to move to the back.
We did a lot of specific work. I worked with Joe in the drills and Clint in the specific sparring. One minute mount, one minute side control, one minute half-guard, one minute rear mount, one minute passing the guard—I was pretty whipped after twelve minutes of that.
Sparring went pretty well. I rolled with Clint first and actually caught him in a keylock, which is obviously my best submission hold at this point. I was in the best position for the arm-wrap choke that I’d ever been in against Clint also, but wasn’t able to close the deal. I think the problem was that I didn’t push off on the arm-wrap side hip to get a better angle for the choke with the other hand.
I rolled with a new white belt (relatively new, at least). He had a few pounds on me, but that was about it. I caught him in a keylock also, and he tapped as I was trying to put him in a katagatame twice. I need to remember to go to guard against guys like this and work my bottom game, especially sweeps and arm-wrap combinations.
Last I rolled with Joe. I couldn’t catch him in anything. But I did do a pretty good guard pass, Eddie Bravo’s “staple gun,” that involves underhooking one leg and pinning the other (preferably to the mat, but stuffing it in a butterfly hook is okay). Basically, you want to pin the guy’s pass side leg with your non-pass side leg (or just jam it) and move your pass side to the outside a bit. Then, backstep with your non-pass side leg while keeping the other leg underhooked to prevent him from turning into you and blocking the pass.
I was surprised that I got it. Very few folks use the backstep consistently—it is one of Rodrigo’s favorite ways to get around a guy’s defenses. I want to try and integrate it more into what I do. Bravo talks about going back and forth between the underpass and the staple gun. I might try that combo for the next few weeks and see if it sticks.
After class, Tommy showed us a couple of moves. He’s got a Cindy-style guard pass where he just hops over the guy’s knees and then turns around and drops into side control. It’s a little risky because for a moment you’re back is turned to the guy. But the hop over is often surprising enough that you can make the move work. Tommy’s big on improve. I’m less comfortable with that and feel like I need to have more of my game mapped out. But that could just be a matter of familiarity with the various positions in jiu jitsu. Rickson is big on improv also (“you must allow yourself to be at a zero point … connected with the variations”).
More importantly, though, Tommy reminded me/us of those "passing the knees" moves that Rodrigo was showing us months and months ago. There's the variation where you step around the knees and put your knee down on the stomach and drop into south-facing side control. And there's the variation where you step in between the knees, underhook against the non-pass side arm and bring the between-the-knees knee across the pass side knee. I need to bring these guard pass variations into the mix, also.
