Today at training, I actually hit a near perfect butterfly guard sweep, my first one ever in real, non-specific sparring. It went so well and so effortlessly that I'm almost afraid to try it again.
Almost. I've been telling myself that I need to work more on my butterfly guard to give me more options between full and half guard. I've been toying with some open guards, both Rodrigo's de la Riva guard and Pe de Pano's cross guard (or my variation of it).
But I've made it a mission to develop a butterfly guard game in 2008 (and to "master" my half guard game). And the fact of the matter is that I haven't been practicing it nearly enough--even when we are doing guard specific sparring.
After today's success, I suspect all of that will change. I'll probably get passed to death, just like when I was working the Cobra guard. But that's all in the process of figuring this thing out.
Right now, I just want to focus on the basic sideways hook sweep. There are a couple of other sweeps that I want to work on eventually. Right now, though, I want to get comfortable attacking and being aggressive with just one or two sweeps from the butterfly guard.
As an aside, I'm also determined to "master" the lapel choke this year. It's such a classic and if you're going to train in the gi, why not become effective with the lapel choke?
A good day on the mat--though it actually felt as if it ended a little early. It won't be a five-day week this week--I took Tuesday night off. But I'm looking to be back on the tatame Thursday and Friday to finish off the week.
Crazy. By week's end, I will have trained more in the past three weeks than I did in the six weeks preparing for the Revolution tournament in February!
