The End of Year Promotions, Open Mat and BBQ at GB Seattle 3.0 this year was a blast. The academy was packed with students, with a ton of white and blue belts along with a lot of black belts stopping by, as well. I was afraid that I wouldn't get a chance to do any rolling at first, so I did my solo drills to bide my time before the picture-taking and belt-awarding began. And then managed to get in some quality time with Elliott and a tough Brazilian blue belt I just met that afternoon.
Four new black belts! Casey, Lance, Doug and Alex all got their faixa pretas on Saturday, which was pretty incredible. Bree and Dex earned their blue belts. Benny and Pat got promoted to purple. Nate and Clint both got brown belts. I didn't have the best seat in the house being (a) on one far end of the academy, (b) short, and (c) more than half-blind without my glasses. But a lot of folks made some major accomplishments on Saturday, and that's always fun to see.
It was also Rodrigo's birthday, which I didn't know. He was being a bit discrete about his age - I heard everything from 24 to 44. But it was especially nice for the two ocassions to coincide.
Training this week has been a little on the autopilot side, unsurprising with the end of the year right around the corner. The main focus for me training-wise continues to be generating a real SENSE of attacking the guard from standing. I've been reviewing some techniques that I liked when I first learned them, and seeing if I can reverse engineer them into a basic "attitude" about attacking the guard that goes beyond knowing a specific technique. That's one of the things that's really been helping with my half guard, so much so that I find myself often in position for my favorite half guard sweep even when I'm not "trying" to get there.
So we'll see what comes of it. Although there are more than a few final frontiers for me to traverse, none are more critical right now than passing the guard. And as Marcelo Garcia himself said during one of his classes (and as I remember Rodrigo telling us years ago), if you can't pass on the ground, then you have to pass standing up.
A large part of that is just getting good with the balance game, the apply pressure game. In the December 2009 issue of Gracie magazine focusing on guard-passing, Alliance leader Fabio Gurgel praises Rickson Gracie's guard passing ability by saying:
"(Rickson Gracie) has as his main quality the fact he perceives each adversary's point of discomfort and doesn't lett him get out of this point ever."
That's the goal - every time I'm attacking the guard. "Where doesn't he want to be? And how can put him there?"
