Here’s how the Marcelinho guard works:
I work it with the left side open, more often than not. That means my right knee is up and my left knee is down and to the side. My left arm is posted back behind me and my right arm is forward. I’m tilted a bit so that my right side is a bit closer to the other guy than my left side is to facilitate the “punch” for the cross collar.
How does the Marcelinho guard work? In this guard, you’ve closed off the ability of the guy to take your back with the cross collar grip, which acts as both a post to keep the guy at bay as well as a “catch” to keep the guy from moving behind you without, in effect, turning you around to face him because of the grip on the collar.
This means he can only come around to the side you’ve deliberately left open. And there are a variety of attacks and sweeps that you can use once he enters the open space. A number of them were moves that Mamazinho showed us last night: the inside stiff arm and roll sweep, the loop choke, and one I forgot to mention that has you pull on the outside sleeve and while controlling that sleeve at the cuff, putting your outside leg in the hip. The other leg goes to the bicep.
I think Mamazinho will be showing people what goes next in tonight’s class. Unfortunately, I won’t be back until Wednesday night. Hopefully, I can get somebody to show me what I missed …
The arm drags that Rodrigo showed us the other day also work well with the Marcelinho guard—as does a move to take the back. I suspect the Shaka sweep will also work from the Marcelinho guard, kicking out the knee with your rear leg and “steering” the guy around with the sleeve grip and cross collar grip …
I’m big on the Marcelinho guard for starting out a sparring session. I’ve now got a whole set of moves out of that position that I need to incorporate as deeply into my practice sessions as possible. Like I said before, I’m starting to feel as if I know how to make myself better, as if I’ve finally started to “get it” with regard to working a “practice gameplan” as the Lloyd Irvin types call it. That might be still yet another thing that separates white belts from blue belts, that sense of beginning to create a game, a set of favorite moves and positions that are compatible with a given jiu jitero’s body type, psychology and skill preferences (i.e., bottom or top fighter).
On the way back to the office from lunch I was toying with the idea of report cards that I would note each training session and evaluate over the weekend. How was the half-guard? Am I getting the lockdown? Am I getting the underhooks? If not, am I making use of an overhook instead? Guard-passing: How many PTMUs? How is my full guard game? Am I transitioning to an open guard—or just holding on for dear life with my ankles locked around the guy’s waist? How many subs or sweeps from the bottom am I trying? Am I being aggressive from the bottom or would Big John McCarthy stand us back up?
An actual report card is probably unnecessarily anal-retentive. But I do want to keep a close watch training session to training session to make sure that I’m really building a jiu jitsu game instead of just rolling around out there trying a little of this and a little of that (as was the case for most of my first year in the art). Like I said before, learning how to learn jiu jitsu is a key early step.
