I had to get back on the mat and training as soon as possible, and after asking around about the possibility of a Sunday open mat, I made sure to make it to the academy as early as possible today.
My arm felt fine in the compression wrap. With a little caution, I was able to do pushups no problem, which was a pretty positive sign. It felt great to train with Brian again, who was one of my main training partners a year ago during the last time I felt my skills really surge forward. I got to roll with Stephen too, though I was pretty worn out by the time we got our five or six minutes on the mat and didn't make it as interesting for him as I would have preferred.
The lesson for Monday were two sweeps. The first was a straightforward flower sweep, with emphasis on getting the hips out, scissoring the legs and trapping the sweep side arm at the triceps. I worked with a good-sized white belt named Angus who was good to work with.
The second sweep also was based off the opponent stepping up with a leg. In the flower sweep, we underhooked the leg. In this second sweep, we used a sleeve and cross collar grip away from the up leg, step on the hip with the far leg and insert a butterfly hook with the near leg.
It is another scissoring sweep. Load the guy's weight with a pull on the cross collar, and make sure that you use your far leg as a block. Pull and load his weight, lift with the hook and scissor a bit with the bottom leg to get the sweep.
Had a good long roll with Brian afterward - a guard/pass guard specific. I did a lot of guard and was able to do some things I hadn't done before. I did end up bailing to half guard more than I would have liked. But with a tournament coming up, I'm not going to complain about working on my bread and butter stuff. Brian is on that list of maybe ten guys that are ideal for me to train with and it was really nice to get to roll with him again. I don't think he is far away from getting his purple belt, at all. In fact, with Professor Feitosa arriving this weekend, I wouldn't be surprised if he, Jason/Garcia, Tim and a couple of other folks found themselves walking away with the faixa roxa.
It was an excellent workout today also. I was 155.8 after training, an unbelievably good number. If I can loiter around these levels for a week and then slice and dice starting Wednesday of next week, then making 154.9 might be easier than I think.
One thing: I didn't get much opportunity to work on passing the guard today. No crime. But I need to be careful of going too many days without spending a good chunk of time trying to open and pass the guard. The reality is overwhelming. If I can establish a guard passing strategy, then I tend to do well. If I don't, I tend to end up tapping. I tried to work the Tozi pass on Stephen, but I did a poor job of controlling his hips. Poor as in terrible. No pressure. No weight. I still like the pass a lot as a way of dealing with my posture problem in the guard. But I definitely need to keep working on it. I remember that as soon as I fell into Sauleh's guard on Saturday a little voice said, "go for the Tozi!". It might have been the same voice that was trying to get me to pull half guard when I went to a knee during our standup.
In any event, I'm looking forward to training tomorrow. More Tozi, more guard pass, more "do well" for me.
