It was a rare treat to be able to train this Saturday - even if my sparring session was cut short by a cut: a relatively small mole that got torn in a scramble and managed to produce a disproportionate amount of blood. No chainsaw massacre, but it was enough to end my day on the mat prematurely.
Rodrigo ran us through a basic warmup before having us do about 8 minutes of alternating ankle pick takedowns. I got to work with Clint who like Stephen and a couple of other guys are perfect for me to train with by being just a division or two bigger and a just a couple of years better. The ankle pick is increasingly looking like it is going to be my go to takedown. It's got just enough of a role for both technique and athleticism that I think it is something I can both train frequently (unlike throws, which I am still too nervous about to use very often in training) as well as use in actual competition. I still want to focus on takedowns like the drunken single. But if I get into a grip fighting battle, the ankle pick is probably my best option for now.
We worked mostly passes against the butterfly guard. There were three variations that Rodrigo showed us, but all three had the same key element of controlling the upper body either by reaching over the shoulder or grabbing the pass side collar, and controlling the hips by grabbing the pants at the knee on the non-pass side.
The idea is to put the guy's back on the mat, while either backstepping around and over the legs or, in later variations, squeezing your knees together to bunch the guy's legs, and then putting your stomach on top of the legs and pancake them to the mat.
Again, I didn't get a lot of sparring time at all, maybe four minutes before the cut. But there were some things that I did like out of my brief stint in the open mat. I hit my first hook sweep from the butterfly guard in, like, ever. It was a complete blast - in part because I wound up in mount and in part because we had been working on the butterfly guard that day (though from the point of view of the passer rather than the guard player). And though I still FAILED to attack with the inside arm drag from the half guard, I did like my movement in general in getting out of an occasionally flattened half guard, avoiding the crossface, and using my knee both as a wedge and to set up half-moth guard.
I also got a nice scissor sweep, which was almost as rare as the butterfly hook sweep I got. The real trick with the scissor sweep for me is to get the guy's momentum going: pull soft, push hard, then pull hard. There's a drunken aspect to the scissor sweep too, if you want to exaggerate the movements a little bit to both distract and to make sure that you are on point with your mechanics. This sweep landed me in a very nice knee on belly and I tried to go immediately for the armlock and missed it - ending up back in guard. Here, I think the problem was that I never really controlled his upper body with my weight and allowed far too much space for him to escape.
Still, it was very nice to be getting these sweeps, sweeps I rarely use, and to wind up in dominant positions like mount and knee on belly. Of course, the devil is in the details of finishing from these dominant positions. But you've got to get there to be there and, Saturday was a pretty good travel day.
