Lindsey taught the competition team training today on Friday. It was a nice reunion. As I wrote awhile back, it was Lindsey's Monday evening classes back at GB Seattle 2.0 that inspired my notion of ATM (Always Train Mondays).
Lindsey's classes are a nice combination of athletic-styled warmups and a personal focus on the technical details in the move of the day. We worked on the ankle pick takedown to start things off, the takedown I used to call Rip Cord, the takedown that used to be my number one attack as a blue belt before I started getting sloppy and the takedown stopped working. There were about three or four basic technical details that I was getting wrong that were fixed by the end of the class. Giving a turn of the shoulder when setting up the snap down, and then "snapping down" into the full Neo pose, elbow-to-knee, to really break the guy down ... There were other details, but those were among the ones that are most likely to help put Rip Cord back into my standup attack.
There was also a nice variation on the tripod type of sweep. Same grip sleeve grip, same side foot in hip, sweep side grip on the ankle, sweep side hook behind the knee. The sweep takes the guy sideways as the sweep side hook is the key part in breaking down the supporting leg.
Rather than spar, I did a little drilling on the half guard with Glenn, specifically the Circle Back move against guys who try and get low and far away from the half guard and then the cross collar turn-to-knees escape if you are late and the guy gets a good hold of both of your legs. The key with the Circle Back is to follow the guy up as soon as he retreats from engaging your half guard and then to circle hard, getting a little space with your inside hook to make it easier to attack toward the back and using your post to keep your pressure on him as you circle.
The key with the cross collar turn-to-knee escape is really just to commit to going to fully away from the guy instead of trying to retain some sort of sideways posture. It some ways, it reminds me of the half guard "Bullet-Time" counter to the knee cross pass: it feels weird and as if it makes you even more vulnerable, but the physics are exactly right. The more you go directly to knees, the harder it will be for the guy with the bear hug pass to maintain the grip. And the easier it is to free your knees and resume the attack.
162.4 on the scale post-train. I was hoping for lower, but given my massive Monday weigh-in just north of 170, I probably shouldn't be complaining. It was nice to work a little technique on Friday with Glenn - admittedly, if I weren't training on Saturday I might not have had the discipline/courage to forgo an opportunity to spar. But it was great to work through both of those moves and is a good reminder of why it is so important to take control of my jiu jitsu training and education whenever I have the opportunity to. There are no lack of opportunities to just spar. Opportunities to drill technique more often need to be sought out - eagerly and consistently.
