Steve's BJJ Blog » deep half guard http://www.stevebjj.com The ups and downs of a middle aged martial artist. Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:22:08 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 60% of the time, it works every time http://www.stevebjj.com/2010/07/05/60-of-the-time-it-works-every-time/ http://www.stevebjj.com/2010/07/05/60-of-the-time-it-works-every-time/#comments Tue, 06 Jul 2010 02:57:22 +0000 Steve http://www.stevebjj.com/2010/07/60-of-the-time-it-works-every-time/ [...]]]> Really good class tonight.  Bill did some craziness for a warmup.  30 seconds each of burpees, jump squats, pushups, mountain climbers, plank and then more burpees.  Active rest, then 30 seconds of crunches, side crunches to each side, leg lifts, more crunches and then frog kicks.  Then more burpees, jump squats, push ups, mountain climbers, plank and even more burpees.  I hate burpees. 

Learned a nifty sweep if you can get it when a guy stands in guard, and then worked on a loop choke from guard off of a well defended scissor sweep.

Sparring was a lot of fun.  Sammy, a 4 stripe white belt made me pay for being complacent.  I got a chance to roll light with Sammy before class, so when I gave him side control to start the match, he made me pay for it.  He immediately went for a choke, then moved to mount. I got back to half guard and eventually swept, but he pushed the pace and made me work for everything I got.  Fun match. 

I also had a chance to roll with Ethan, who basically got me in all sort of weird positions. 

Third roll with a white belt who’s getting ready for the tournament.  Great roll.  He’s getting really good.  The only thing I noticed is that he basically pulls guard from the top.  It’s a weird thing that I don’t get.  Guys are in my guard and basically ceding the sweep.

Last roll was with Vinh “Diesel,” a big, purple belt.  Vinh’s solid from on top, so I was really pleased to catch him with a deep half guard sweep I’ve been working on.  I’ve not been able to catch any upper belts with it, and I’ve never even tried it on anyone up over 220 lbs.  So, when I rolled into the deep half guard position, it was a challenge to get him up high on my shoulder.  That was the key.  I shimmied and jived until I got to where I needed to be.  Once there, the sweep was money, and it felt really good. 

My back’s feeling good, too.  I hope Sean’s working Wednesday.  If he is, I’ll get an adjustment to keep things where they belong. 

]]> http://www.stevebjj.com/2010/07/05/60-of-the-time-it-works-every-time/feed/ 2 The one where I train less BJJ but learn to Swing… http://www.stevebjj.com/2010/02/08/the-one-where-i-train-less-bjj-but-learn-to-swing/ http://www.stevebjj.com/2010/02/08/the-one-where-i-train-less-bjj-but-learn-to-swing/#comments Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:48:13 +0000 Steve http://www.stevebjj.com/?p=533 [...]]]> Not THAT kind of swing… sheesh. This blog is strictly PG, for Pete’s sake. I mean East Coast Swing. For Christmas, I signed my wife and I up for dance lessons. I have always wanted to do this, but have never taken the plunge because of my chronic back pain. For years, even at times when I would characterize my back pain as being “mild,” standing was bad. Standing up for long periods of time, walking, running, that sort of thing would make my back ache. So, now that my back is feeling really good, I figured it was time to give it a shot.

It’s terrific. I am really enjoying have regular time to spend with my wife. That’s been great. I’m also have a lot of fun with the dancing itself, and it turns out that I don’t completely suck at it. We’ve been learning lots of moves, and I think that East Coast Swing was the perfect dance for us to start with, although my wife drug me to a Cha Cha seminar and that was pretty fun, too.

I know that some other BJJ addicts out there also dance. I’d be interested in any tips or tricks you have for me. I’m a total dance noob.

On the BJJ front, though, I’ve been training sporadically over the last month or so. It started with ringworm. Yuck. I had it on my arm, took a couple weeks off to defungalize, then went back to training and ended up getting it again, this time on my throat. Double YUCK!

I’m not sure where I got it or from whom, but I definitely don’t want to do unto others as had been done unto me… if that makes sense. I stayed away from the school until I could be damned sure it wasn’t going to come back. Add to this a spouse who’s travelling quite a bit for work, a volatile toddler with strong opinions about things, a 12 year old daughter who wants to bake cakes, cookies, breads or and a son who’s in the midst of daily wrestling practices and it’s been a challenge to get to class more than once or twice per week. I’m really hoping to change that after we get back from DisneyWorld in a few weeks.

Still, on that front, I have been working on recovering guard from turtle, and have also been working on some deep half guard stuff that Coach introduced into class. I’ve been having some success getting to the deep half guard position and overall am liking it for reversal/sweeps. I’ll need to take a look at the Jeff Glover instructionals to pick up some more tips and techniques.

That said, anybody out there like deep half guard? Let me know if you’ve run into any details that helped you with it (or to counter it).

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