First Thursday training in about a month. The new schedule on Thursday is actually a lot like the old schedule: with an hour of beginner gi jiu jitsu followed by an hour of all levels no gi. Cindy leads both classes.
We focused on double legs to start with. I can't say enough about how much I like the new, more focused and specific classes. There are always more advanced and sophisticated moves to learn (on Mondays and Wednesdays, for example). It's nice to focus on some basic, core moves that will pay off for years.
The double leg is one of them. The process is the drop, the penetration with the forward knee to the mat, head up and tucked against the torso, arms around the knees and enough contact to knock the guy off balance.
The middle part of the move is the step through and step out. You want to step through with your other leg and then, as you stand, step out with the drop leg.
One detail was here was that the step out should be "out" and to the side. Your foot should be pointing in that direction.
Also make sure that you grab around the knees. That will make it that much harder for the guy to put you in his guard - especially if you do the takedown properly. Which leads to another point: use your inside shoulder to pressure the guy as you take him to the mat. I was a little surprised at how much pressure this puts on.
The double leg is really a move that I need to drill the same way I've been drilling the morote seionage, the Jacare and the Machida (and the combo, the Machacare, for when the guy steps back to avoid the Machida leg sweep and you transition to an ankle pick with your collar grip). Thursday was the first time in a long while that I really got to focus on the specific details of the move and it is definitely a keeper if I drill it.
On the ground, Cindy worked on knee on belly. Here was another nice technique I had wondered about for awhile: switching sides/knees from knee on belly. Cindy showed two approaches: the pike around, basic but effective method, and the step/backstep style that I remember seeing Pe de Pano use to devastating effect in the 2003 Pan Ams. With both, the trick is to plant your hands on the guy's chest and turn them in the direction that you are going to move. That pressure will substitute for the moment when you knee is not applying the downward pressure.
Cindy also showed us a counter the common knee on belly escape of pushing on the knee and elbow escaping away. What you want to do from the top is to let the guy turn into you and stuff the knee-push wrist to the mat. Gripping that wrist, with your inside hand, step around his head with your outside leg so that you can sit on his head while you reach for the kimura grip. One detail here was to really get a good kimura grip by pulling down on the wrist and up on the forearm. Done the right way, it is almost an arm crusher in and of itself. What it does either way is give you a lot of control over the arm and shoulder. You can attack with the kimura or continue to turn and turn it into an armbar.
Another detail: You can sit on the head while you attack with the kimura. But laying out - the same way you do when you are positioning for transitioning out of mount and back to side control - can give you more stability and make it easier to get a good turn on the kimura.
Tatame wasn't bad. I rolled with Alex and Michael. Alex caught me almost instantly in a Marcelo-style guillotine that I had to spend some pretty dedicated moments surviving and eventually escaping. I've got a tendency to lower my head, like a lot of people do. But my bad habit is exacerbated by the caution of not getting a shot in the eye. There's going to have to be some middle ground.
I'm back to thinking that butterfly guard will be my "other" guard. It makes sense for all the ordinary reasons, but like everything else I've been a little hesitant to engage it as aggressively as I should. The butterfly guard is even less of a "hanging out" guard than the half guard, so if you're going to play it, you've got to get in there and play it and not screw around. No gi tonight was a good opportunity to be aggressive with it. Hopefully that wil carry over into training over the next few days and weeks.
One place I really like the butterfly guard is as a counter to guys who have been backing off my half guard. This gives me a nice alternative that, among other things, can bait them back into a more regular half guard. I like the butterfly guard option a lot more than just trying to pull them back into my half guard.
Also I'm liking the idea of trying to force a butterfly guard defense of my guard pass. Even thoug my half guard passing has stalled out over the past several weeks, I still think my high comfort level in the half guard will ultimately make me a fairly confident half guard passer. At least that's the plan - and the strategy I'm deploying when it comes to adding the butterfly guard to my game.
