I can't say enough about how nice it was to get back on the mat Monday night.
Despite my previous proclamation, I ended up going in for both the basic and advanced classes on Monday. It turned out to be a great idea. In the first hour, we worked on takedowns in a semi-live environment. I worked with Andrew - always a good guy to train with - and we did a few two minute rounds and a few three minute rounds. I was straining to keep active toward the end due to my illness-induced week-long layoff. But I managed to finish the drill okay.
One great thing about this training is that it reminds you of the potential limitations of gi grips. I've really been looking to attack with the double leg, so it was nice to see how the challenge of the grips forces me to figure out new entries.
The instructional was attacking with the triangle choke against the single underhook guard pass. The key was to control the sleeve of the arm that is pressing your leg down and to put that foot in the hip. You want to pull with both hands on the sleeve at the wrist, and then push off with your foot-in-the-hip as you swing from on your side to flat on your back, swinging your other leg up to attack the neck and set the first half of the triangle choke. Grab the ankle or just go ahead an lock the other leg over to finish.
In the advanced class we worked on two pretty sophisticated looking techniques that actually can be strung together as part of an overall guard sweeping attack.
The first one was out of Cobra guard. From the Cobra set-up, with your grip behind the back on the belt, you slide your down leg through his legs and dive down to underhook the leg on that side with the arm. As you do this, bring your other knee up nice and high so that the guy ends up balanced on your shin in a butterfly like fashion.
In a perfect world, you can roll the guy from here. In all likelihood, though, the guy will post, forcing you to transition to a number of variations, from the Fugitive style moves against the leg you are butterflying, to X-Guard and half guard sweeps. Rodrigo just showed us about five or six variations and had us go to work on them. I got to work with Jason/Garcia, who was great to work with in part because he really seemed to get these sweeps and was able to fix a few of my missteps. Mostly, I was feeling the fatigue set in, mostly muscular fatigue as opposed to "cardio" per se. But I managed to get through the drill.
The second sweep was even more complicated. Here, you used a cross grip on the sleeve and then, with your other side, hook your leg behind the guy's opposite leg at the knee and grab the pants at the heel with the hand on that side.
To attack with the sweep, you want to dive between the guys legs, pulling on the ankle grip for momentum as you kick your "hook" leg against the back of his knee. It's one of those "believe" jiu jitsu moves, at least until you start to get it down. Garcia was all over this move and it was pretty interesting to watch him and Stephen spar after class with both of them working to incorporate the move of the day.
A good night all things considered. Like I said, it was really nice to be back training again - even if my cardio is clearly lagging. I'm a little worried about getting up to speed in time for the Revolution. Then again, four weeks might be the perfect duration to allow me to peak in early November - it seems that I tend to breakdown after about six weeks of regular training and conditioning work. So maybe things will work out on this score after all.
153.4 on the scale after training ... I'm looking to be back on the mat tomorrow, if only for the live session from 7-9 p.m. That might be the formula for every day training: full classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with an hour of work on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That would make for a nice eight hours of training a week. At least for the final month leading up to the Revolution, this seems like a strategy worth pursuing.
