Didn't feel comfortable braving the icy roads that surrounded both house and 'hood Monday night, so my first time on the mat was tonight.
A very, very good class. Even though I did squats earlier in the day, I felt very good doing the warm-up: squats, pushups, chokes ... A lot of energy. Maybe it was the tea and oranges at 4 p.m. that did it ...
I worked with Lindsey - for what might have been the first time in more than a year. Another great guy to work with - we were doing 7 minutes of ippon seoinage drills to start with and it was a good, good flow.
We did one of my favorite guard passes, one I had been hoping that Rodrigo would show us. The goal was to deal with guys who open their guards and go into a sort of "scissor sweep guard" with their knee up in your chest.
The first pass was for those times when you are fast enough to move before their knee gets fully in place. What you want to do is pin the lower leg to the mat with your near leg in a sort of shin-pin, with your toes still on the ground to keep him from gaining half guard.
Staying low, you want to get a cross face or shoulder pressure with your outer arm, while shooting for the underhook with your inside arm. If you can't get the underhook, then you want to put your elbow down tight on the hip, as you do for a good tight crossbody, and work to get your hands Gable-gripped over his far shoulder.
From here, you can pass by bringing your other leg to the shin-pin side, by bringing the other leg up and sliding into mount, or by backstepping toward the shin-pin side.
The variation was in case you were late and he got the knee up. In this situation, you've got the shin-pin, but the knee is blocking you.
With your inside arm, reach and grab the guy's gi high up on his back. At the same time, palm the knee with your outside hand and put all your weight on it as you pull on the gi with your other hand. Keep your hips down, flattening the knees.
Once he gets pretty flat, you want to switch grips. With your outside hand you want to switch from the knee to the collar (front) to pull him toward you. With your inside hand, you reach between his legs to keep the bottom leg pinned as you walk your way around toward your pulling hand to pass. Stay low, stay heavy, then drive into him to put him on his back as you move into side control.
The last technique of the night was a choke from side control using the gi. It was another one of those slide-by's, as they say in Greco, where you control the lapel with one hand, slide around the guy and pass the lapel to the other hand to complete the choke.
There was one version where you switched grips and another where you used the same grip all the way through. But I need to think them both through again to make sure I remember them correctly.
