Another small class ... things seem to be tapering off going into the winter holidays. I got there a little late. But there were six of us once the warmups were done. Big Mike (now Mike the blue), Jim, Mike Two Stripe, Casey and a new white belt I think I've seen once or twice before. Because of the small size of the class (and, I suspect, the UFC's Ultimate Fight Night on Spike at 8 p.m.) we went straight into specific training and then sparring.
Mount. Back control. Side control. Half-guard. Closed guard ...
I definitely felt the difference between my aerobic and anaerobic conditioning tonight. My aerobics are fine: I've got a nice low pulse, recover quickly ... the problem is that my anaerobic conditioning is not up to speed. Among other things, that means more DB complex type training and less LSD (long slow distance) training.
I think I got five rolls in: Casey twice, Mike Two Stripe, the new white belt, and Jim. I liked how I used the running man escape, and managed to turn into the turtle, if not to the knees, a few times. I still feel lost in the closed guard, especially when it comes to breaking posture.
One way of attacking posture that I haven't tried is to combine pull/push attacks, like an arm drag or collar tie followed by a crossover sweep or butterfly tackle. I'm still interested in the BJ guard, but I'm realizing that I'll need to increase my hamstring flexibility in order to make that work for me.
My attacks feel very limited. I've got the keylock. But my chokes are consistently ineffectual from most positions. And I can't remember the last time I really went after an armbar ...
Another issue that came up tonight, though only for awhile, was my guard passing. I'm slipping on that and need to get my discipline back on track. My half-guard was better in part tonight, mostly because I got a good feel for the lockdown. But there are two main flaws with my Bravo-styled half-guard game. One, I'm coming up on the inside elbow for tackle sweeps, but I'm not coming up on that inside knee. Mike Two Stripe did a very good job of pulling my inside arm out from under me when we were rolling, demolishing my base.
The other problem is with the twists. I'm not positioning my inside leg properly, hooking the guy's outside knee. I need to study that a lot, because I think there are twist sweep opportunities from the half-guard that I am completely missing.
I want to work on these spots because, for better or worse, I think my game from the bottom is going to be based on Bravo's half-guard. We'll see what happens. But I don't have a ton of confidence operating out of the traditional closed guard. Come the January tournament, if I'm on the bottom then I want to have a "go-to" position. And increasingly it looks like the half-guard is it.
