Missed Monday. Was a little too sideways to train. Truth told, I'm still feeling a little sideways. But I had to get back on track. And tonight was the night.
We started off with a basic warmup, then moved into some standup/foot work drills using reverse pivots and hip throws.
We worked two new techniques from the ground. The first was a counter to be used when you are pinned in side control and the guy switches his hips and moves to take mount.
The trick is to grab the guy's pants at the knee. You want to attack the near leg, the one that ISN'T going to swing over into mount. As he moves to take mount, you want to turn into him a little bit and, as you lift up on his leg, slide your inside leg straight out to the side, under and around the guy's trapped/trailing leg and put him in half guard.
One detail that Rodrigo emphasized was keeping your head tight against the guy's lead arm, the one that swims over your head as if to set up a kimura attack when the guy switches his hips. The best way to recover from this counter is to be able to reach back and hook your head. Keeping your head pinned against his shoulder as you do the counter eliminates this threat.
The other technque was a counter against somebody who has you locked up in half guard with your head and arm in a tight grip.
What you want to do is to reach and grab the collar, thumb in, with your outside hand (my left hand usually). Once you have that grip, dive down with your inside hand and grab the pants by the calf.
You are going to stiff arm the collar grip, pull on the leg/calf grip and escape your hips as far back and outside as possible. The goal is to create enough space to insert your outside leg - knee up - and replace your "crushed" half guard with a quarter guard or Z-guard.
I like this move a lot - and almost tried it in sparring but I found myself on the opposite side and couldn't coordinate my movement before it was time to do something else.
A good class. I sparred a little bit in the guard and then spent a lot of time on the mat with Rodrigo. He called me out for being too defensive, especially when he took my back. I have a bad habit of going into 100% "defend the choke" mode and tonight, with more than a little fatigue and confusion trying to spar Rodrigo, I relied on it too much.
I'm still feeling a little embarassed by it - as is my way. I know it's a problem that I need to fix - one of the big holes in my game, from some perspectives. I'll get at least another crack at it this week - though I'll include it as one of my goals for this 10-week training camp (now in Week 3).
Managed to get in a workout on Monday (Monday's Man Makers) and a 3T workout today. We'll see what I end up doing tomorrow.
