I've got a bad habit of confusing control of the legs with control of the hips. Rolling with Scott tonight - who earned his blue belt today, by the way - I was stymied by the fact that I seemed to constantly be battling his legs to pass his guard. The problem was that by not controlling his hips, he was constantly able to redeploy his legs, regrouping from whatever block I might have been able to put up and attacking again to replace the guard. Rodrigo pointed this out a week or two ago when Scott and I were training and it's something that I think I really need to focus on this month as I try and put together a Unified Field Theory for passing the guard.
I realized that one reason my Royler/knee cross pass fails is because I'm not getting control over the hips by putting my weight on them and forcing my knee outwards rather than toward the head. My toreano issues have to do with what I said at the beginning in confusing leg control and hip control. The leg rope stuff Saulo talks about? That pass hasn't ever been happening for me, in part because I have a hard time balancing as I lean forward to use my shoulder to keep pressure on the hips as I either swim forward or circle back.
If recognizing a problem is the first step toward solving it, then there's still plenty of time in August to get done what I want to get done. That new takedown from Rodrigo was a complete gift, giving me a nice one-two takedown attack that feels very natural and both caters to my ability to change levels pretty quickly (now, of course, to apply that little talent to guard passing ...) and avoids my phobia of reverse pivot throws. So I've really got one project for the month and there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to handle that.
