"Off week" for me following the tournament will likely amount to a little more junk food than I should treat myself to and just two training days this week, Tuesday and Thursday. Next week will be a pre-week of stepped up training and some LSD cardio in preparation for a six-week training camp leading into the Subleague event in early May.
Tuesday night we focused on open guard - specifically spider guard - passing and opening the collar to take the back. There was a hell of a lot of spider guard on display at the most recent Revolution, and I can't help but wonder if part of Rodrigo's inspiration for this week's lesson were some of the epic battles between spider guards and Those Who Would Pass Them.
The passing technique here was a move similar to what I called the "Uptown." From the spider guard, you want to wait and maintain your standing base until one of the spider legs is extended. From there, with the opposite side leg, you want to step across and plant your foot on the mat right by the hip of the extended leg. Second, you want to step/swing around with your other foot so that you are perpendicular to the guy's body. The third move is to use your stomach to press into the legs, smashing them with your body and legs as you lower yourself, forcing the legs together and flat over to the far side.
This was the main pass. From here, the second half of the move was to take the back and, importantly, focusing on getting a grip on the collar to open it up for the choke. The idea was that when you pass the spider guard and begin to drop down, the guy might turn to his back or even try to roll. The trick is to spot the collar BEFORE you start to take the back. It's very easy to grab the collar as you are passing the guard, and then pass it to the other hand as you roll. It's much harder to try and grab it after you've already started to roll.
To grab the collar you want to use your southmost grip to grab the near collar as you collapse down, getting chest to back, after you pass. Make sure you are under the arm as you roll (this should be easy/obvious, but keep it in mind). As you roll, reach over the shoulder and around the neck with your other hand and take the collar as you pass it over.
I had to leave before the open mat got started. I had some pretty decent tatame with Andrew (twice!) and Rohelio (sp?). I'm trying to focus on basic closed guard armlock/cross choke/scissor sweep stuff whenever I'm rolling with white belts to try and bring that part of my guard game up. And of course, white belts are helping me work on my weak side half guard, too.
It's been a rough week off the mat already. I'm looking forward to training Thursday night and for the weekend, where it will be nice to have no obligations. This "Great Recession" has been hitting us pretty hard ever since the end of 2007 and it is very little consolation to have anticipated much of this mess years ago. I'm annoyed enough at myself for not shorting the f#ck out of this market when I had a chance. It's all the more frustrating to find myself on the rump end of things as the recession moves from the financial to the economic.
That's all that. It will be fun to get in a little no gi Thursday night. I've always thought of no gi as a little like jiu jitsu "dessert" and it's high time I treated myself to a little cake and ice cream.
