Open mat work on the day before the Revolution tournament. I got in some good time with one of our larger blue belts, then a round with Brian, then a final round with Angela. I had planned to spend some time focusing on the long half guard sweeps and backtake I wrote about in the last post. But live sparring is typically not the place to get that kind of thing done, and today's training was no different. As usual I did work a lot of half guard. But it was pretty much standard fare from my good side. So there's that.
Guard passing continues to be a strong point. I'm doing a lot of successful knee cross passing against the half guard (maybe I'm not meant to do backstep half-guard passing, after all). In a very long Open Mat session with Chaim (arguably two, regular sessions back to back for about 20-25 minutes of straight training), I was working hard for the Effing Pass and again, while not successful in getting the pass with any consistency, I was able to stay on the offensive when on top.
As always with Chaim there is escape and survival training involved. I'm doing a bit better in both instances, getting the initial explosion and space creation in that initial 1-2 seconds. What I need to do is to find the third and final second that has me replacing guard, or getting back to my feet, or some other neutral position. More often than not, I think that position will be a half guard, and it makes sense to begin looking for entries to the half guard out of my basic escapes. But here, the other big issue is will and determination to keep pushing through to the third and final second rather than giving up after the first two.
159.5 on the scale post-train.
