Solid class Tuesday night. We did a lot of work on triangle chokes, building on the coursework from Monday in Lindsey's class. In addition to just working the basic choke, Rodrigo had us work on a basic hip opener in the triangle position (identical to one of my hip stretch exercises) which seemed to help. I am pretty much sticking to the strategy of grabbing my shin to help initially lock in the triangle. It may not make the triangle my go-to move from the guard, but hopefully it will make it possible to at least add the technique to my working inventory.
In the advanced class afterward, we started with some takedown warmups. I continued to work with Angela, who has more impressive takedowns than I'd realized, particularly hip throw, uchi mata and the ankle pick. She's not back to 100% with her knee, but was apparently okay enough to train some, which was good to see.
On a related note, Cindy was there Tuesday night with a massive brace on her leg due to a recent knee surgery. She'll teach Thursday night, but she's going to be off the mat with her knee problem for quite a while.
The instructional in the advanced class was a Rodrigo special. He had us working out of that moth/spider guard set-up a drill that was part balance drill for the guy on top and part sweeping drill for the guy on bottom. I didn't feel super comfortable with the guard and will definitely need a lot more practice with it. But just watching Rodrigo and Andrew work it - and Angela for that matter - I can see that it is an effective way to work out of both moth guard and a deep half guard.
We did some guard/guard pass specific sparring. I rolled with a tough blue belt named Benny who was visiting from San Diego. I'm still having a hard time breaking posture in the guard, probably because I still just use my arms and not my whole body. It's a huge, historic problem and one that I should move to the top of my list in terms of things to fix.
My top game is still pretty tight. I feel more deliberate and able to move slower and more decisively from the top. That's some good news.
More notes on the sparring tonight will be in the weekly "Straight Outta Tatame" report Friday evening (if I don't train on Saturday) or Saturday afternoon (if I do).
