First, congratulations to all of the Foster BJJ guys who competed yesterday! You all did great!
Warm-ups were relatively light, although the ab work was on the tough side. Coach told us that sometimes the tournaments highlight a skill or technique that we need to work on as a group. Apparently, many of the guys competing yesterday, including our guys had trouble passing half-guard. I guess they’d get to where their legs were locked up and be unable to move into mount or into side control. So, today we reviewed the details of doing this, many of which I hadn’t heard before.
We’re presuming my opponent is in a good, solid position, so he’s got my right leg locked down and his right arm is across my neck, widening his elbow out, and his left arm is on my hip, keeping space and allowing him to remain on his side. I want to free my right leg so I can make him pay for all of the smack he was talking. The first thing to do is to make sure that he’s flat. The “correct” way to do this is NOT to drive forward, basically creating an uncomfortable amount of pressure on my neck, although if I’m strong or heavy enough, this might work. Instead, the best way is to walk my legs around toward the trapped leg. So, I widen out my right leg a few inches and then bring my left leg in. This changes the angle and forces the bad guy’s shoulders to the mat. Very simple and very effective. We played around with this a bit and if I’m on the bottom, this seems pretty foolproof. I tried to nudge my hips out, but the change in angle sort of screwed that up.
When I attempted to hip escape, I basically gave him side control, even if I did manage to get a knee in. Not sure if that’s better for me from half guard. Now that I think about it, it may be. Rather than giving him mount or established side control, I can be in a more defensive position up on my side so I’m not flat and vulnerable, and my knee inside his hips to give me some leverage so that I can work to re-establish my guard. But I digress.
Now that the villain is flat, I’m going to underhook his left arm to keep him from blocking my right knee, and also to keep him from slipping out underneath and taking my back. I’ll then drive my left hip down to the mat and basically walk my foot up towards his butt a little at a time. Eventually this will create enough space to pull my knee through. When that happens, I drive my knee to the ground and establish my base just as if I had mount. Now I can usually point my toes and pull my foot through. In some cases I can use my left foot to force his legs open and get mount.
The variation we learned was for when I can’t get my foot out. My opponent has super strong legs and I just can’t manage to get my foot through. In this situation, I’m going to switch tactics. I first need to re-establish my underhook on the right side to prevent him from getting my back. Then I’ll keep my head low and bring my knee up and over to his right side so that both of my legs are on the same side, controlling his right arm at the same time to keep him from posting on my hip. I can post up on my left leg if necessary to create the space needed to get my knee over. At this point, I point my toes and sit through. If I still need to get my foot out I can use my other leg.
I had several opportunities to work on these techniques in sparring.
I did pretty well in sparring. Three matches in a row. First I went with Mikey who seemed to be ready to go pretty hard. I was tired after that one. I worked on keeping base and staying busy. I had to defend a few tricky transitions and he very nearly got me with a guillotine that was very deep. The only thing that saved me was that he was pulling from what was essentially a butterfly guard. Overall, it was a good roll and I’m very happy with how I did. I don’t have as much technique as Mikey, but I’m a few weight classes heavier than him, and was able to use my greater size and strength to neutralize many of his attacks. While I will typically not try to muscle around with guys at about my own level of expertise, I won’t hesitate to use whatever advantage I can against someone who has enough technique to deal with it.
My second match was with Bruce, who is roughly… oh, I don’t know. He’s easily at 230 lbs, I’d say… maybe even heavier. Bruce is also quite strong. I pulled guard, experimented some with spider guard, and worked to stay busy breaking down his posture and threatening with some submissions. Several times he would retreat back far enough outside my guard that I would get my knees back under me and reset rather than allow him to flatten my legs out. I ended up taking his back a few times and got two taps from rear naked choke.
My third match was with one of the females at the school. I was pretty tired, so it worked out well. I was more aggressive than usual, but she’s tough. As usual, I tried not to muscle techniques, and worked instead on transitions and establishing position. I had lots of opportunities to work on getting out of half-guard and attempted many techniques. I got one tap, a kimura from guard. I’m actually pretty pleased with how this one set up. I was in mount, and she bridged up to try and reverse into my guard. I saw that she was posting up on her right arm, so I went with the reversal and locked her arm up as we swapped positions. As she came over into my guard, her arm was already compromised and she tapped. I feel good that I didn’t use any strength really to set that up. Just kind of saw it as we were rolling and went for it.
After class, I rested for a bit and then worked with Bruce during open mat. He wanted to work on getting out of back control so I worked with him on that for a while. Then I worked on some basic techniques from guard: armbar and kimura. Bruce has either forgotten or never learned the basic kimura, so I showed him the technique as we learned it a few weeks ago.
All in all, a good class. Only downside today was that I got punched in the noggin and have a minor headache.
Oh, and there’s a tournament on September 15th. Now that I’m feeling better, I’d like to compete. I have two months to lose an additional 10 or so lbs of fat. My goal remains to improve my conditioning so that I walk around at 175 lbs, but since injuring my hip I was content to remain under 185 lbs. I’d like to compete at 172 lbs, so I’m going to get serious about dropping that weight.
We jogged for a short while to get warmed up and then started duck walking and lunging our hearts out. Most of us are still nursing sore thighs from Bill’s workouts Sunday and Wednesday, but I didn’t find it too bad. We did some alligator crawls, some hip escapes… pretty normal stuff. Then we did the rolls (I did some squats, just to keep the blood flowing). We did a lot of abs today, which I always like, and some supermans, too. The superman exercise is normally a pretty easy one for me, but once again, I’m finding that my hip is a real impediment. Oh well. Won’t be long now. It feels so much better than it did even a week ago.
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