Tuesday, October 16, 2007

WHEEEEE!!! Merry Go Round of Guard Passing!

So, my guard passing has been my weakest part of my game pretty much from the beginning. I've haven't spent as much time in guard as most of the other positions because I tend to end up on the bottom most of the time. I'm very comfortable working from there. As a result of getting armbarred by the guy at Casca Grossa I resolved to REALLY work on my passing guard and getting more comfortable in guard before NAGA.
Ok, so on with the details... At the beginning of class we did a drill from each position where the object was to just hit your "Go To" move from that position. We started with the guard pass. My Go To guard pass is usually to get swept and try to escape, but since I had recently looked at the underpass and worked it a little I tried that one, deciding I wanted it to be my "Go To" pass. It sucked. I would have been instantaneously triangled like a grilled cheese sandwhich. Adam spotted my idiocy and gave me several tips, ran me through the progression of posturing and breaking guard again and pretty much just told me to stop being an idiot and do what I had already learned. I slowed down and thought it through and things were working much better for me. I still have a bitch of a time getting people to open their legs, but I found out that I have a VERY strong posture; so I can posture up and defend for a long time before getting tired. After that we went through other positions with the same mentality. My "Go To" moves are:

Mount Escape: Bridge and Roll (vs anyone close to my size) or the Elbow-Knee escape (vs anyone much bigger than me)

Side Control, Escape: Elbow-Knee Escape, I'm really good at hooking my foot in and at least getting half guard out of this.

Side Control, Attack: Americana, This has always been my "Go To" sub from side control and mount.

Guard Bottom, Attack: Triangle Choke, I like to get an over hook and work for the triangle.

Guard Top, Pass: Underpass, It's a lot smoother now, though I still need a lot of work on it, a WHOLE lot of work.

After these drills we broke up to roll. As usual I have no memory of specifically WHO I rolled with. I do remember I rolled with a couple of guys who usually sub me every 20 seconds or so even when they are going light (Yeah, that means you Jeremiah) and I managed to get away with only getting subbed 3-4 times in 20 minutes. I was posturing way better from the guard, maker fewer mistakes, I was passing and moving around the guard better. I spent a fair amount of time in mount on one guy who usually takes me to school pretty hard. He also caught me in a triangle which I postured straight up in, I had him hanging from my neck for quite a while trying to sit up and finish it. I was pretty happy with that defense. So I feel like I'm making good progress on my comfort level inside the guard. I'm posturing better, making posture my priority, and I'm less worried with getting an immediate pass and concentrating more on not making mistakes.

Of course, the gym is closed thursday and friday. So this will be the only day I train this week. I wanna say good luck to Dave and Vern and the rest of the guys fighting this weekend. BEAT SOME ASS!!

2 comments:

  1. You know, sometimes I think you should revise how you say things so that this site doesn't get pron filtered. Tch... having a bitch of a time getting people to open their legs. So dirty.

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  2. Heh - yeah, I sometimes find that people are reaching my blog with keywords like "trapped me between her". Pretty sure they're disappointed when they click through. ;)

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