Tuesday Rodrigo had us working on a sitting guard escape against a person standing. There were two moves: the first was a return to standing and the second was a sort of "double Fugitive" sweep. Of the two, the sweep was a lot easier for me even though even there it took a little while.
The return to standing move was essentially the same as the sit2stand movement in my matwork (TM) drill set. I had a hard time doing back and forth and alternating sides when drilling the move with Alex. But I think that's just a matter of familiarity breeding coordination if I practice the move more.
The second, Fugitive-like attack was a lot easier. Here, the trick was to attack with the first hook with the leg that is flat on the ground on the side. If you attack with the front foot, trying to hook with the leg/knee that is up, you run the risk of the guy collapsing his weight on your knee and passing to your back.
We also did that crossover sweep drill that I first remember Stephen doing when he was teaching while Rodrigo was on vacation a few months back. Here again, I can credit matwork (TM) for helping me do well with this drill, insofar as the crossover is another of the routine's nine moves.
Tatame wasn't bad. I worked the basic half guard game with some success, the "move of the day" in the crossover went well, and I found a nice entry to the katagatame from side control that I really, really, really want to work on. But I struggled again with the Flat Pass and am starting to once again feel just-shy-of-existential feelings about passing the guard. I've got another two weeks to maximize August in the way I'd hoped to, and because I'm not feeling myself starting to coalesce around a basic UNDERSTANDING of how I want to pass the guard, I'm starting to feel a little panicky.
Hopefully, I'll be able to train on Friday and start to carve out something that makes sense. A part of me thinks I should be working to bait guys into giving me guards that I feel very comfortable passing, and a part of me thinks I should just take a basic attitude toward passing the guard and impose that attitude consistently and relentlessly. To a large degree, the latter is what I'm doing/focusing on now with the Flat Pass and the 101, especially the 101 out of the squat. But I'm still having problems.
With the Flat Pass, the big mistake I'm making is allowing the guy's legs to be too far up my body when I make my dive to the side. This makes it easier for them to snake their leg up under and attack with omoplatas and gogoplatas. Both Alex and Jason (Garcia) have been lethal with these attacks because of this mistake I keep making. The ideal time to attack with the Flat Pass is when the closed guard is low, not high. Pin the bottom leg to the mat with the hips, not the chest.
The 101 has suffered from dissuse. I just need to cut that out. Like a lot of things in jiu jitsu, there's a moment in the 101 when it feels like it is a terrible idea, then a moment where you realize, "hey, this is working!" Unfortunately, I've got a tendency to hang-out in that bliss of standing-without-being-swept for too damn long instead of taking the initiative to open and pass the guard as soon as I have restored my balance on the feet.
