Between the Dogfight and the Deep Half Guard

With four weeks to go before the November revolution tournament, I'm in a pretty good position to start focusing in and scaling down my game. It really is a matter of programming yourself, of eliminating every thing that doesn't contribute to the goal of getting to the side, pummeling for the underhook, whipping up and forcing the Dogfight or diving for the single leg game of the deep half.

Working with a white belt a little bit after training on Saturday, I was able to work some half guard passes that Rodrigo showed us years ago but that I never really put to work in practice. It wasn't much, but in that three minutes I trained that one guard pass more often than I had in three years.

To the extent that my jiu jitsu is single leg/half guard related, there's no reason not to master as much of it as I can. And a large part of that is simply sticking to the lesson at hand, day after week after month.

The same is true with the game from top. I'm starting to get a nice little suite of techniques that I like from certain positions. Now is the time to develop "the sensibility" as Rickson calls it, the invisible stuff.

The most interesting aspect of jiu-jitsu is – of course the techniques are great – but the sensibility of the opponent, the sense of touch, the weight, the momentum, the transition from one move to another. That’s the amazing thing about it.

That and the PDA are what can minimize the difference in age, strength, speed or even skill. It's what makes it possible for Rickson Gracie to still amaze brilliant jiu jitsu martial artists half his age who are steeped in the most innovative technical manuevers of the day.

I'm not saying that I can be as talented as Rickson Gracie. But I haven't had to compete against anyone as good as Cobrinha or Marcelo or Roger, either.