Another hard training session this week as Rodrigo already has the competition pace established. We worked on takedowns after the basic warmup, more with the kara guruma. I noticed some of the folks who were doing this well, like Wellington, weren't going all the way down to the knee (the inside knee) when setting up the takedown. That was more or less how I was doing it, but there were instances when I felt I was not getting a good "circle" in the takedown, and was essentially just throwing the guy to the mat. Hopefully, I'll get to work on it some more. At least I know what I'm supposed to be doing.
On the mat, Rodrigo had us working with more x-guard - or half guard, as he called it. The first entry tonight was really nice, coming out of the hook sweep. Here, you are looking for the guy to sprawl out against your hook sweep. When he does this, attack the other leg with your underhook, and reposition your hips underneath him, pivoting your hook sweep hook back outward and away from you.
We also reviewed entering the X-guard from against a standing opponent. Here the move was essentially the same as Monday's - only with more emphasis on using the cross guard as the set-up.
Tatame wasn't too bad. Again, I'm focusing on standing to pass the guard and trying to steer the guard player into uncomfortable situations from which he just "gives" me the pass. Later, working with Lance, I focused on a "Mendes" like duckwalk guard passing style which helped me avoid sweeps - though I half-forgot exactly how I wanted to attack from this new posture. I'll be working more and more out of it as I keep up the whole Standing Guard Pass Campaign 2010.
I was 165 and change before training and 160 and change after. I'll probably do a little caloric restriction tomorrow to help speed things along on my training/conditioning OFF day. Hopefully, I'll be on the light side of 160 by the end of the week.
