The takedown today emphasized the difference between the traditional, wrestling-style double leg and the judo morote-gari takedown. Although there were a number of details that made the two takedowns different, two especially stood out.For one, the morote-gari attack takes the guy's legs out from under him, he "sits" into the takedown. Unlike the double leg, you keep your elbows in tight to your body and reach around just wide enough to cup the top of both calves of the opponent. From here, forward pressure with your shoulder and essentially a blocking action with your hands (your palms should be facing/cupping the calves) to prevent the guy from stepping back gets the takedown.
The second difference was in leg positioning. Unlike the double leg, the moroto-gari doesn't have you put your knee on the mat. If I remember correctly, this is because that would be a "shido" in judo. You step up with your back leg then forward in the penetration step with the lead leg, changing levels just enough to that you can get the proper hand position. Drive the shoulder and chest forward into the takedown.
On the ground, we worked the closed guard pass. Here, the guard guy gets a collar grip as if working for a choke or a scissor sweep setup. From the top, you want to reach over with the same side arm and grip both the collars. By closing your elbow, you should be able to trap the choking arm.
With your other hand grap the trapped choking arm by the sleeve. Keep this grip forever.
Make sure your elbows are tucked and stand up, ending with posture straight and feet parallel. Once you're up, you can drop the collars grip. On that same side hand, you put pressure on the leg at the knee and STEP BACK to create the right angle for opening the guard.
Be sure to maintain both the sleeve grip and the inside control with your legs.
Prof Carlos showed us the knee cross pass from here, ending up in side control. There are a number of different ways to finish from the standing inside control with the sleeve grip. What is especially nice is that - like the cross guard - you can pick up the pieces of this guard pass if things get scrambly. I tried harder than usual to implement this pass in Open Mat insofar as I'm desperate to have a standing guard pass that is as go to as my half guard sweep. This one has a lot of elements that I like, valuing control over speed, for example. At a minimum, it will give me a launching pad for reconfiguring my standing guard pass game - and just in time for the Seattle Open on the 29th, two weeks away.
161.4 on the scale post-train, everything but the coat (and the belt). Making weight by the beginning of Week Three is probably perfectly fine - which also makes the timing of the Seattle Open very helpful. The next month should start off a period of very intense training: 4x/week minimum, tightening up on the diet bit by bit, and working to push through in training when the fatigue (or sense of futility) begins to creep in, knowing that I'm always no more than a quick 20-count away from safety, advantage or submission.
