We worked on a variety of drills today. The overall effect was to learn some new moves as well as get in some solid conditioning.
We started with some basic pummeling, then went into the armdrag against standing opponent drill that Rodrigo had us do before. Next were two-step and one-step armlocks from the guard. After that, we did two triangle choke attacks: one from a spider guard set-up, and the other a push-pull set-up against the guy's hands.
All good stuff. To add to the conditioning aspect, we only worked one side.
Rodrigo threw in two other techniques that were sort of combination moves. The first was a sweep off an armlock transition-to-omoplata attack from the guard. The second was a very nice sweep to use when you are on bottom in half-guard and the opponent is keeping his weight on you.
The sweep off the armlock comes when the guy tries to pull his arm out of the lock by stacking. You swing around and underhook his leg with your inside arm and transition to the omoplata on the opponent's other arm. What the underhook does is allow you to sweep him if he cannot be finished with the omoplata. You just continue rolling turning it into an omoplata sweep with the help of the underhooked leg.
The half-guard move was a way to get space at a minimum, and a sweep at its best. What you want to do is grab the opponent's collar behind the neck and, with your inside arm dive down and grab the pants of his trapped leg at the knee.
You don't just want to reach down, though. It is almost a dive where you want to get your head as far south as possible.
You want to free your hips. Kick your legs back against the opponent as you work your way almost into a shoulder stand. The deeper you dive with your head, the easier it will be to get up on your shoulders. This is what helps really get the leverage in your legs going--especially if your legs are on the short side.
To complete the sweep you just keep kicking back with your legs and rolling over your shoulder. It seemed weird, but once you got the hang of it a little bit, it was an amazingly powerful sweep from the half-guard. Definitely something to start working every time I am in half guard.
