Monday night is must-train training. Rodrigo was back and he had us doing handicapped drills. For example, we did a guard drill where the guy on bottom had to have one hand in his belt. We did a half guard drill where the guy on top had to have one hand in his belt. And then we finished off with a side control drill where the guy on the bottom had to have both hands in his belt while the guy on top had to have one hand in his belt.
Great stuff. Real old school, forcing you to use your body instead of your hands and arms. Like I said, more Mondays like this would be just fine with me.
Nothing remarkable in sparring. I'm still working my Watch Dog half guard pass and feeling more comfortable with it. I need to try going immediately to mount after the pass (Jean Jacques calls this the "ballerina pass"), now that I'm getting better at freeing my leg - or even getting the wedge knee in.
Still having a lot of trouble passing knee-up half-guards. There are two options I need to start using. The first is to use a toreano style pass where I stand out of the half guard and pin the lower leg to the mat with one grip. Jean Jacques has a nice version or two of toreano passes that include this step. I'll pick one.
The other option is to grab his near sleeve and bring it up nice and high. With your other grip, I think you want to grab the pants near the hip. Stand up and out of the half guard and go immediately to a knee-through "Royler" pass while keeping a good hold on that sleeve.
It's interesting. I have two different types of ways of fighting the half guard. One is to reverse and go to Watch Dog (or "Crossbody" as I'm thinking of renaming the position). The other is to treat the half guard like a partially opened full guard.
We'll see how they work. A good night of training. I got a massive cramp in my left calf late in sparring with Stephen. It was a bad one. But it went away eventually and I was able to roll with Rodrigo later for good spell. I've got to make sure I keep my hydration up. Given the fact that I did my Pull resistance routine earlier in the day (and the hipscape/back2belly jiu bata before that), I really should have been consuming more fluid all day.
Post training number of 159.8. Not bad at all for a Monday. Bacon, cantaloupe and coffee for breakfast. Lamb, rice and salad for lunch.
