Tonight after the kids' class we continued to work on sweeps, both the flower sweep and the hook sweep off the opponent standing on one knee. The flower sweep is familiar, but the hook sweep is new, so it has been nice to work on it for two days in a row. I worked with Brandon this time, and he was going back and forth from side to side to help me focus on identifying the right sweep opportunity and responding with the right grips and movement.
Tonight, we did the flower sweep without the opponent standing on one knee - though the move is essentially the same, either way. The common thread in both the flower and hook sweep was taking the guy away from the up knee side, using that leg as leverage either by underhooking with the arm or underhooking with the foot.
One thing that I need to do is to get a better sense of where the "pause" is in the hook sweep. Generally speaking, if you want to use these sweeps, you want to attack that leg with a hook whenever you get the opportunity. I would imagine that you could pause with the hook sweep right before the push/pull/hook move to execute the sweep. The trick will be in looking for opportunities to use the sweep in sparring.
Tatame was pretty good. I had two standup sessions and two long ground/guard pass sessions. I'm still struggling with the Tozi pass, though I did manage to get it to work twice (another time I think I got my back taken or wound up in an omoplata-like situation). The trick is in keeping pressure on the one side of the hips with your shoulder, while keeping pressure on the other side of the hips by forcing the leg to the mat. My Tozi passes were a little more scrambly - but I was starting to see how the fundamental move of switching your hips makes it easier to pop the closed guard open. That may make it easier to improvise if I don't get some of the other details of the pass right.
Another nice number on the scale post-training: 157.8. It was another good hard workout today and I'm glad I've stopped all off-mat conditioning for the two weeks leading up to the tournament - I need all the energy (and rest) I can get.
