Back to practice Thursday night ... no gi. I work most of the drills with Cindy. Then end up sparring with Rodrigo for somewhere near 18 minutes. After a long break--I guess it was "open mat" by then--I rolled with Michelle ("Wags") and then Tommy for about five minutes each.
The training was very ... training-like. As opposed to "instructional". We worked a lot of triangles and armbars from the guard, good basic stuff ... Armbars from the mount ... Then we did a lot of butterfly guard sweeping which I especially liked. Rodrigo had us also to a backstep as a defense against the sweep.
The one "new" technique might have been a set up for the triangle. Essentially, you open your guard as if you were setting up for a scissors sweep. Only instead of planting the foot on the ground, you push off the hip. You take the leg that, in the scissors sweep, would be hooking under the arm and slide it up and around the neck--shin first until the last minute--for the triangle.
Rodrigo had us start off this attack with a double wrist grab, where you've got the guy's arms extended toward your head. One nice thing I can see about this move is that if you get a guy in this position, he's going to be thinking "defend the armbar" because his elbows are (a) low and (b) between your hips and your mid-chest.
It was a little awkward at first. And I'm not sure whether I prefer an underhand or an overhand grip on the double wrist grab. Rodrigo was encouraging us to use the former, I was tilted toward the latter.
In any event, a good thing to work into the rotation. Cindy pointed out that you want to pull on both wrists hard to break the posture down well and make the triangle that much more effective. Speaking of Cindy's Secrets (as I'll call them, along with Tommy's Tips), she told me that when using the butterfly guard, you want the butterfly hook to be in the knee rather than deep in the thigh. It makes it that much easier to control the person on top. Insofar as I'd love to build my no gi game around both the half-guard (Bravo) and the butterfly guard (Marcelo), that was some good "infrastructure" advice ...
Rolling with Rodrigo was crazy as usual. He caught me in a few triangles and armbars, as well as a "underarm" keylock. It was interesting to see how quickly he defended my keylock attack from half-guard or the side--I think I surprised him last time about how quickly I could get into that position, and he wasn't going to have any of THAT this time around. What's funny is that I really started paying attention to the keylock after HE caught me in one TWO sparring-togethers ago from the bottom in half guard. I was blown away at how quickly you could slap one on, much more so than a kimura if you've got the right position. You can pull it out with the speed of a wristlock, but you get the advantage of attacking a larger target (i.e., more room for error.)
So into the rotation went the keylock ... It's been a little while since I've caught anyone with it, and I need to make sure I'm setting it up and working on transitions off of it. But it's become my bread and butter submission, for better or worse.
