I've decided to take the same three day Fight Week schedule that I did before the last Revolution event: Monday/Wednesday/Friday. I overheard Lindsey and Casey talking about when they expected to have their last training before the tournament on Sunday and I think Thursday and Friday were among the consensus days.
After some hipscapes and standup for warm-up, we worked the counters to the deep half guard attack. There was the #1, the one I CBDP'd a little while ago, the sprawl switch and walk back. Here we had two more, both dealing with the shin block. #2 was the one that Casey seemed especially to like. Here you've got the leg lace on the upper leg. The new aspect was switching down knees so that your inside trapped leg is now standing. From here, stuff the guy's down leg (the one on the mat) and backstep into a watchdog side control (facing the legs).
Standing on the inside knee made mobility 100x better. It is much easier to shift the weight to your other leg (knee down - though I guess theoretically you could squat) from standing than it is from the knee where you have two steps in one.
That's what you get when you drill with brown belts (four stripe brown belts, at that). Critical, move-making details.
#3 was a stacking manuever. Rodrigo explained this one pretty thoroughly, but it will take a lot of feel to get it right. From the leg lace, you want to bob vertically, shucking the leg to try and straighten it and get the leg supported on your shoulder instead of your arm. This might take a few bobs (and if he doesn't go for it, you've always got #2). If you get the leg high on the shoulder, then you want to reach around with the arm on that side and get a cross grip on the collar by the neck. You can even reach for the shoulder near the neck as Jacare does in his first fight at the ADCC 2005 competition.
From here you stretch the guy out and go around the guard in either direction: into the stack or crossface and backstep the other way.
Tatame was very vigorous. I didn't take advantage of the opportunity to work my deep half guard as I should have. But I did work my weak side for one whole session which I've rarely done so deliberately. Benny was very tough on my strategy of continuing to pass from standing - he's another excellent guy to train with in the days before a tournament. I wasn't able to have success in passing from standing, but I managed to avoid getting swept and right now, that's perfectly fine with me.
156.8 on the scale post-train. I was 168 on the scale in the gi before class, which is another measure worth watching. I need to be under 169 Sunday morning come weigh-in time.
