The instructional starts at 5 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays, so I got over to the academy on the early side. We continued to work the flower sweep and hook sweep against the leg, when the guy goes to stand on one knee.
One thing that is increasingly clear is how these two sweeps go together. In both instances, you are attacking the one leg. In the flower sweep, you are underhooking it and getting your shoulder behind that leg and undermining his base. That's probably why I like that sweep so much.
With the hook sweep you are doing a motion that is more like a traditional scissor sweep: loading the guy's weight on to you with a pulling motion and using your bottom leg to sweep out the guy's base. As long as you remember the load the guy's weight, this is a very good sweep.
I'm feeling a bit broken down, having trained for three days in a row. There's a chance that I'll get back on the mat on Friday, but it is possible that I won't be able to train until the Feitosa seminar on Saturday. I've decided to just attend the one day, take some time off on Friday, and then head into the final week with three or four good training sessions.
Another excellent number on the scale after training: 156.8. One thing I'm not impressed with is that I haven't made guard passing the focus it should have been for this 8 Weeks Out training camp. I've focused a lot on the conditioning end, which has been good and informative. But I've let my skills focus slip a little. I haven't been working my bad side half guard like I should, same with Rap Star, and the underhook guard.
Part of the reason for setting up the 8 Weeks Out camp was to really take a look at how I prepare myself for a competition - and in that it has been an instructive two months. I'll be doing a real review of all of that after the event. But one thing that is already apparent is that I haven't done as much focused, specific work on what will be the most critical part of my fights on Saturday: passing the guard. And I've got about three or four training days to do what I can to fix that.
