I've said before that I've thought Rodrigo and Mamazinho were mind readers. I can't tell you how many times I've been thinking about a certain position or escape, only to have that exact situation be the topic of the class that week.
I had been struggling against Rodrigo's de la Riva guard on Wednesday - and had been spending some time studying counters to the DLR guard in Saulo's Jiu Jitsu University. But, as things would turn out, Rodrigo was already working on the lesson plan.
Rodrigo showed us two different counters to the DLR guard. In both instances, the trick is to collar tie the neck and pull up, crunching the guy's body and making it harder for him to have the leverage he wants to stretch your base out with his pushing leg.
Also here you want to squat down into the DLR guard. This strengthens your base and puts pressure on his hook.
The actual pass had you step back a bit with your far leg (the one not being hooked). This will get the guy's legs and knees lined up so that you can do a knee through pass between his bended legs. With the hand on the far side you want to shoot for the underhook to keep the guy from circling to your back.
The guy may still have a grip on your heel as you slide through. If this is the case, then what you want to do is this: kick your leg backward to break the grip, then drive the knee of that leg inside (as if preventing a guard replacement) and then backstep your other leg free.
The other version is in case he doesn't give you the angle to slice the knee through. If this happens, then instead you want to do a knee-through, Royler style pass to the other side.
Be careful because you likely won't have an underhook when you shoot to the opposite side. Because of this, you want to square yourself perpendicular to his body as soon as you escape the legs. Knee-through, pass, and then swing around to control the upperbody and avoid losing the position.
A good night of training as Thursday's tend to be. Still a little weak on the sprawls, but I felt like I had good energy throughout.
Rodrigo's vacation starts tonight. He'll be in Hawaii for a couple of weeks I think. In his absence, Lindsey, Jessee, Andrew, Stephen and Cindy will be teaching classes. After three weeks of training three times a week, I'm tempted to really turn it up a notch heading into the three-day, Labor Day Weekend. Four classes, at least, and maybe give.
155.3 on the scale after training. Cool beans. I'm up to 4 miles on the LSD, adding a quarter of a mile each time I go out. This week, probably on Thursday, I'm hoping to add in mat work as a cardio routine to breakup all the LSD monotony. Trying it out a little bit on Thursday morning, some of the routines are going to work better than others as a part of mat work - and there's no way that I'm going to be able to start with a full minute each. I may have to make each station shorter and just rotate through the whole circuit twice as many times. Sixty seconds worth of sitouts - at least at this point - is just asking too much.
