Lindsey led the warmup. Jumping jacks, squats, pushups, chokes, L/R obliques, his special tempo pushups, hip splits and then some stretching.
Rodrigo started us working with the takedown I'm calling "Machida." We worked on that for about eight minutes. After that we worked on guard passes. The first was a spider guard pass we'd done before. You get caught in the spider guard. Stand up. Step back with your right foot to make the guy sit up and take some of the strength out of his legs.
Circle your right hand under the ankle to break the grip.
Step forward with your right foot and bring your knee down against the back/inside of his outside leg. Step through with your left foot and push forward with your stomach and hips to remove the spider grip on your left hand. It's a sort of Fowler, only your knee doesn't go all the way through to the mat. Just enough to pressure him and keep his legs pinned back.
Reach through with your right hand and grab the collar and pull him tight. Backstep with your right leg to pass the guard.
The second pass of the spider guard has you step back only to get caught in a de la Riva guard. To pass this guard, let's say the DLR is on the left leg. Again, step back to get your momentum, then as you step forward with your free and outside leg, you want to turn in to the guy, going perpendicular.
This will both break the DLR hook and allow you to push the leg that still has a spider grip on your right hand over across his hips and fold it down and away from you. Drop down to back/side control.
Good moves - and moves that I'm in the season to be cultivating. I really think that what stands between me and the faixa maroom is consistent guard passing. If I could bring my guard passing to the level of my half guard (or, at least, my half guard at its best), I think that would almost do it.
Some nice things about the tatame and the specific work (guard/pass guard). I'm doing a better and better job of creating the reaction I want, baiting guys into going for the first move and then attacking with the second move - the one I really want. The thing with jiu jitsu is that you can't really "fake" like you can in boxing or striking arts. The guy has to feel a very credible threat to his left or he won't over commit resources to a defense - an overcommitment that makes it possible to attack the other side or from the other direction.
This is a classic example of something that I've really started to understand when it comes to the half guard, am just picking up when it comes to takedowns and am still searching for when it comes to passing the guard.
I did have some success with the Jack in the Box pass (Jack pass, for short). I've been thinking about strategies where instead of knowing how to pass every guard in the world, you learn how to bait guys in to using the guard you are most comfortable in passing. I've had some interesting success baiting guys into using butterfly guard against me - a guard I really feel fairly comfortable attacking. So maybe there's something to that worth thinking about.
Speaking of the butterfly guard, I've decided to go for it and make the butterfly guard the "other" guard to go along with my half guard. It's mostly in response to what's been the most effective counter to my half guard sweeps: the bear hug pass. I'm thinking that sitting up quickly into a butterfly guard and going for the hook sweep as they commit to trying to pass might be a strategy worth trying. That and the choke as they over commit their hands to hugging my legs.
On another note, I can definitely see how my conditioning work over the past few weeks is starting to pay off. I'm feeling much less fatigued during training compared to earlier in the year. Tuesday is a conditioning day off. So far so good.
