As Roseanne Rosannadanna used to say, it's always something."
Tonight - and most nights these days - it's my shoulder acting up. Things got really hairy toward the end of last week. But going into training tonight I was feeling pretty top notch. A few hours later, I'm aching again.
I'll have a better sense tomorrow. It wouldn't be the first time I came home after training aching somewhere only to wake up the next morning feeling close to if not at 100%.
In any event, tonight's training was solid. I had actually been hoping to do some mount/mount escape work and tonight that's exactly what Rodrigo delivered. The emphasis was on getting your elbows tight, your hands on the hips (I was grabbing the pants at the top or the belt with underhand grips) and giving a good strong upa before escaping your hips BACK.
Back. Back, back, back, back, back. Another point of emphasis was this good strong hipscape as far back as you can drive your hips. Otherwise, all you're doing is turning on your side beneath his mount.
This is a good reminder of why it's a bad idea to half-ass your hipscapes. I've been working on them on my home mat, trying to get smaller and deeper (just like with the half guard). It's a little more extra effort. But the rewards of a good, deep hipscape are huge. And it's worth making them a habit.
A good time in sparring. I got my first omoplata submission in months if not years, and a nice omoplata to rear-mount transition that I remembering seeing Ryan Hall pull off (though he was en route to a heel hook or something). Can I tell you how nice it is to get a submission that ISN'T a keylock/americana?
I made a nice transition from the Cobra guard to X-guard - another move I haven't done in years. It took me awhile to get the inside hook in - and I spent a little too much time "working the guard". But it was nice to feel myself slip into that opportunity - however awkwardly.
There was also some nice work overall in half guard,a nice patient twist back sweep. Out of sitting guard, I'm being much more aggressive about controling the wrists. I need to move that to the next step of turning wrist control into armdrags. But so far so good.
I was trying a lot of my toreano guard passes with Rodrigo. For one, I think that will be my main weapon of attack when trying to pass the guard because so many of the guys I compete against have very active open guards.
The other reason was that I have had trouble against standing guard passes myself - particularly when I'm in my sitting/Cobra guard. Standing against Rodrigo gives me an excellent look at some of the options that I should consider when I'm on the bottom against a standing opponent.
While I'm on the subject, one thing that Rodrigo did was that patented Gracie Barra move that I've seen Pe de Pano do in the Pan Ams, where you attack one leg and sort of do a hip split around it after capturing the arm. That's not a great description. But I'm going to do a lot more standing against Rodrigo's guard to see more options that I can use when I'm in that spot.
My mount has grown by leaps and bounds just from being trapped in Rodrigo's mount and seeing what I had the hardest time with. That's where I got the idea of alternating between locking my ankles underneath the hips when I needed maximum control of the hips (for example, to deal with the upa), and grapevining the legs to make hipscapes harder.
If I can improve my basic approach to guard passing the way I improved my mount, then this will be a very productive second half of 2008.
