Made it to the early class today. Two weeks in a row for ATM.
We worked on three different counter to the basic butterfly guard hook sweep. The basic defensive posture is to counter his belt grab with an overhooking belt grab of your own. Bring your elbow in tight and cinch your arm to get a good grip.
1. The first counter was a pass to the side. Here you went from on both knees to plant your left foot out and to the side. As you put pressure with your shoulder grip, walk around backwards to that side. Check and shove the blocking leg inside either by grabbing the pants, the foot, or leg lassoing to reach under that leg and grip the other.
The trick with this pass is to open up and begin the backing movement early. If he gets control of your free hand, then you won't be able to do the pass.
2. The second counter comes if he is able to get the sweep going. Here you want to balance on your head and overhooking arm (release the grip a little bit to get mobility). Cut your trailing knee across to the pass side, under the guy's leg, and crossface to get the guy flat as you work to the side. It's a sort of Ricco switch pass, but you don't have to go too fast.
3. The third counter was the one I practiced the least. But working with Bryan, he was able to hit it pretty frequently. Here you're being swept, and can't cut your leg over. This is often because the guy's knee (of the hooking leg) is outside rather than inside, blocking your leg. In this situation, you want to maintain your balance/pike position and kick your leg back over backwards, sort of in a backstep. As long as you keep a tight shoulder/overhook grip, you should be able to maintain control and get to the top.
It was good work to start the week, even though I felt as if I were in a bit of a fog until we were well underway. Even being on the bottom was a nice opportunity to work the hook sweep out of butterfly guard - a move I've been wanting to work on for months.
Got in a pair of rounds for tatame before I had to skeedaddle out of there. Focused on countering the cross face when on the bottom in half guard and seeing how it opens up opportunities to get to deep half (though there is the Aesopian sweep also). From the top, the Ezekiel was working, mount armlocks were not, and the cross wedge half guard pass was a winner on the first try.
Mondays are still Mondays. A day for getting the cobwebs out of the system. I'm not sure if I'll get on the mat on Friday. But I'm planning to make it at least a four day training week. Since it looks like we'll be working the hook sweep for the instructional, I ought to focus on the hook sweep from half guard and maybe even my kimura/stuff sweep, which has gotten sloppy.
159.0 on the scale, post-train. Fair enough. Felt fatigue after the drills, but was pretty okay during and after sparring. I'll have a better sense of whether the project is working a week from now.
