Today we worked on maintaining balance while standing against the sitting guard.
Some of the details included fist-gripping the collar to help drive the guy's outside shoulder back toward the mat. If he goes for your far leg, you can grab that reaching arm and use that to help keep him flat, also.
Good stuff, especially for me. It is my latest paralyzing paradox to have decent balance when it comes to defending takedowns, but very mediocre balance when it comes to standing against the guard. I tried to focus on my lead leg, the knee pressure into the chest, to help create opportunities. I think it was pretty worthwhile.
What was even more worthwhile, though, was Rodrigo's tip on taking the back from deep half guard. I was actually doing a halfway decent job of getting to deep half guard, and was trying to hook the leg as Saulo recommends. But Rodrigo pointed out that if you snake your hand inside between your body and the hooked leg, and use that hand to assist the hook, you have a better chance of controlling the guy and actually getting the superior position.
From a certain perspective, it was a gold mine. Taking the back from deep half guard is actually on my List of 9 to work on for the second quarter (April, May, June) in preparation for the July Revolution. I need to make deep half guard in general and taking the back from deep half guard in specific top priorities from the bottom.
Nothing too remarkable in terms of passing the guard. I got caught in a Clint triangle, but I don't remember the set-up so it might not necessarily have been a matter of me wandering around in the guard without a plan. Then again ...
Not a great night of training, but a good solid 90 minutes on the mat. No gi tomorrow and maybe a class on Friday will wrap things up before the intramural tournament in Bellevue on Saturday.
I'm trying to do for guard opening and passing what I've done for full guard attacks like Rap Star, King Crimson and Scissorhands. The trick to jiu jitsu is to reduce everything to a technical argument, a matter of physics in sequence. From there, it's just a matter of coloring by numbers.
