A good sized class tonight, as I try and put my ATM routine back on track. The new mats were in, both upstairs and down, so Rodrigo was able to split off the beginners for some basic work with Lindsey, while the rest of us stayed upstairs.
Rodrigo had us start off ferociously. We did seoinages at a really fast clip. going back and forth with the partner after about 20 reps. I was able to keep up in no small part due to the off-mat, home training I've been doing that has me working on those inside pivots at slower speeds.
The instruction was more work out of the butterfly/sitting/Cobra guard. All of the moves started with a same side collar grip and a same side knee grip.
The first move was the duck under, a repeat from last week. To this, Rodrigo added:
1. If the guy's knee goes up on the outside (the closed side, where the collar grip is and your knee is up), then you want to drive him to the side by pushing the collar across his body and pulling on the knee grip. As you do this, slide your Cobra leg straight behind you (as you do for the duck under, for example) to help get the leverage to come up and into the guy.
2. If the guy's knee goes up on the inside (the open side, where the knee grip is and your knee is down), then you want to transition to deep half guard. Do this by diving into the space created by his up leg. Slide your Cobra hooking leg through first, and then follow immediately with your collar grip hand. When you get the collar grip hand through, reach up and grab the hip or the belt. You can always transition to a proper, Jeff Glover style deep half later, or just go to the sweep, which will pretty much accomplish the same thing.
The sweep is essentially the Homer Simpson sweep without the walk forward set-up. You dive through, get your grips, roll out a bit to get control of his leg with your legs, then roll back - switching your grip to cup the knee and driving the shoulder into the guy's hip to keep him down.
Good stuff - and a nice reminder to start working in the deep half guard as well as the cross guard I've started to focus on more and more in training.
For the first time - maybe ever - I was too exhausted to finish the complete second class. I worked through the specific sparring with Juan: half guard/pass half guard, full guard/pass full guard, side control/escape side control. And was really struggling toward the end. When the specific ended and the regular sparring began, I crawled off the mat totally done. I felt a little embarrassed. But I was in no shape to get anything productive done.
I figure the culprit was a combination of insufficient calories (I had a salad and an apple all day), and the morning workout (manmakers), and the fact that I'm still on the dark side of 160. Hopefully, I'll have a better showing on that score tomorrow.
