One of the reasons I'm having such a hard time going into slingshot from half guard is that I almost never use the knee block to set it up.
The same is true with my struggle to enter the deep half. I'm not creating enough space, enough posture in the other guy, to give me the edge when I dive for the deep shoulder hook.
So I'm modifying my weekly goal to make the knee block a priority. Hopefully the knee block will be the gateway move that gets me into the other parts of the half guard that I've been having a hard time accessing.
Good, good training tonight with a good sized blue belt and Lance in the specific and Bennie in a regular sparring roll. Rodrigo provided an excellent tip on stepping over the leg rather than trying to "knee over" that makes a lot of sense and reflects the lesson from Monday's training (the sprawl and crawl pass with the armframe). Lance caught me in a couple of chokes, but it was the collar drag late that made the most impression. For some reason, I find collar drags more natural than armdrags, and getting caught by a good collar drag was a nice reminder to work it back into what I'm doing from sitting guard, etc.
A smallish class, which included some younger folks as well for a change of pace. There seem to be new students almost every other day, which is good on every level. I also think it will be another vindication of the self-defense component of the Fundamentals class (tonight it was the front headlock escape takedown to S-mount armbar, the one with the check on the knee and hip and step back ...). If those guys don't end up training for more than a few months, then at least they'll learn a few things that might stick with them for awhile.
158.6 on the scale-post train. That's the second consecutive day with post-train weigh-ins that are five pounds less than they were a month ago. I felt a bit of fatigue at the end of today's training. But even now, I'm starting to feel myself recovering a little quicker after each training. I'm still spending too much energy from the guard (see "knee block" above), but that too is very fixable.
