Showing posts with label halfguard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label halfguard. Show all posts

Friday, June 27, 2014

Takedowns, Halfguard, and Ankle Injury

Missed an update for the Wednesday class, which was one of the most physically demanding I've done yet, well, up until that point. More half-guard work, some rolling which included a round with a 190ish lb guy who just won gold at the Mundials as a blue belt, so that was fun. A lot of work, which is good for me.

Today we started out with some takedown sparring which went reasonably well for me for once. I kept baiting the single and converting it to no-gi tomoe nages, then on the second to last takedown the guy shot in for a double, I got underhooks, he tried to convert to a bearhug trip. I turned with it and got the throw for the reversal, but rolled my ankle at the same time. So that hurts like mad now.

After that we drilled more halfguard. Halfguard passing this time.

First, basic pass to mount. Farside underhook, nearside arm under the head, knee in the armpit, then hip switch to the free hip, walk the trapped leg up, pop the leg off with the elbow, and drive through. Spider walk the underhooked arm up to control it, and windshield wiper your free foot over to the thigh to help complete the pass to mount.

Second pass was the same up until you clear the trapped leg, then opponent blocks the knee drive, so you pop up and drive to the inside for the baseball slide pass.

Third pass, they grab the underhook before you can flatten them, so you backstep, your outside hand goes to their knee to block them from following you, you scoot your hips up a bit and then free your leg.

Fourth pass is just like the third one, but you decide to get greedy and go for the kimura, they defend by hiding their arms behind your back. You grab the toes of their inside leg, and then roll over your shoulder and via crazy rolling sorcery take the back.


After that did work in half-guard, guy on top passes or submits, guy on bottom sweeps, submits, or reguards. Got some stuff to work, felt fairly good in general. Did the second round with a new guy who seemed a little frustrated that I was sweeping and passing on him very easily, so I tried to encourage him and help him out a bit and he seemed to be ok at the end.

Got in a couple of rounds of rolling after that, one of which was against a guy with silly triangles. Twice I thought could beat him to the escape and couldn't, and one of those involved me getting leg-in triangled in hilarious fashion. I was able to get halfway to the omoplata on him pretty reliably, but wasn't able to finish it.

Again a very physical class, my ankle hurts like hell now, so I'll have to wrap it and ice it when I get home, but I'l be back at it Monday!

Friday, June 20, 2014

Deep Half Sweeps

Three times in one week! For the second week in the month! I've now trained 7 days this month, which is about equal to the number of times I trained all year up to this point.

Basic warmup, the right into deep-half sweeps. This is a position I've been working on for a while with limited success, so I was happy to get the chance to work it here.

First the basic entry to the deep-half, which I CONTINUALLY mess up. I frequently lead with my underhook on the leg, and leave my head behind, which results in me getting d'arced. You can't do that, you have to dive head and arm together, ear on their thigh, to avoid the d'arce.

Once you get there you gather up your opponents foot/leg with your halfguard and then pendulum to bring their weight forward and get control of the leg.

First sweep was a basic waiter sweep. You have rocked them forward, they post to avoid you simply ducking out to the back, so you underhook their ankle and pendulum again. A detail I need to pay attention to is making sure that I sweep my penduluming leg under me as I come up so that it doesn't get tangled up when I take top.
Now you control their ankle until you get your knee on the mat and pinch their leg, then you can complete your pass.


Second sweep was the same entry, but this time when you attempt to underhook the leg for the sweep you can't reach it. You pinch their leg (I usually scoop it with my inside leg instead) and insert your outside legs shin into the crook of their knee. Now execute exactly the same pendulum and come up on top. If you get bogged down trying to complete the pass on the inside for some reason you can switch and pass to the clear side.


Third sweep, same setup, but this time when you try to sweep them over they move and post with their arms. You loosen the underhook on the leg, swim over their posting arm and around the head, then plant your inside foot and backwards roll to top.

I need drill all of these more, but just getting to drill the entry with Head + Arm instead of leading with the arm helped a LOT once we started rolling.


Rolled with the idea of working towards the deep half and was able to execute some version of the waiter sweep multiple times against varying partners. Not as often as I would have liked, but enough for me to feel like I made some progress cleaning the technique up. I also dealt with way fewer D'arce attempts since my head was in tight the whole time.

The rounds were super long, I have no idea how long, but pretty sure it was longer than 6 minutes, and I stuck around an extra 20 mins or so to roll since I didn't have to be at work as early today. That meant I rolled for somewhere around an hour with very small breaks. I feel good about my cardio recovery so far based on my improving performance rolling.

My philosophical ramblings are still cementing themselves, so that post will probably come together some time in the next few days since I want to make sure that I'm saying exactly what I mean when I write it.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

USG Grapplemania 2012 Writeup

This writeup is a little bit late because of my hectic schedule since the return, but here it is at last.

We left out friday morning and cruised up to Henderson, NC. The drive wasn't bad and we arrived at the venue in plenty of time to weigh-in. I hit 149 fully dressed, though I did have to empty my pockets and take off my sweater. There was a middle school basketball game going on in the gym so we went out to dinner with the USG crew before returning to roll out the mats and setup tables and stuff.

The next morning we arrived at around 10:15 and I got changed, then we had a 10:45 rules meeting and I was once again on the mats by 11. I was the first match of the day with Richard and that kicked things off.


Once again his deep halfguard game proved to be too much for me and he was able to consistently prevent me from scoring by maintaining the quarter guard and keeping my foot trapped until he was able to sweep.

My second no-gi match was against his team-mate German who ALSO has a wicked halfguard game, even MORE wicked. He was able to take my back and lock on a choke with my arm trapped, but I had to tap to the straight armlock from having my arm trapped so tightly before the choke was even finished. The kid is just wicked. He went on to win a bunch of medals, including the purple belt absolute division. Richard didn't hit the button on my camera, so I didn't get the match with German on film, but he whooped me good.

After that I had no more no-gi matches so I went to work a table for a couple of hours, then it was on to the Gi matches.

These are in no particular order. I THINK that they are in the order that they happened, but I'm not entirely sure.

This is Richard AGAIN with his halfguard and AGAIN I am unable to free my foot on several occasions when I could have taken over the match and won. We are fairly evenly matched in every position except halfguard where he enjoys a distinct advantage and is able to keep the matches there consistently. He outpoints me again in this one.

Watch him do it again. He's incredibly good at getting that underhook and immediately getting up onto his side, something that I struggle with from the same positions. Again he outpoints me.



This match is me up against Bagels who is hilarious and a blast to hang out with, but is also a complete monster to roll against. Stylistically I match up better against him than Richard or German just because he's a lot more dynamic which gives me more openings and chances to generate options. We ended up in 50/50 guard and I was actually up on advantages when he got that second ankle lock and was able to crank it down. His footlocks are extremely nasty. You'll notice that we seem to be having random discussions during the match, not sure if you can hear them but he tried to armbar me out of the 50/50 and I made fun of him for watching Keenen Cornelius youtube videos, then we were both trying to go for the same 50/50 counter which we found out later is illegal because it counts as a 'cloverleaf' attack and not a straight ankle lock.
All in all this was the most fun roll I had of the day and I look forward to going up against Bagels again in the future.

This guy was kind of big. I tried to pull a sweep and it didn't work, after which I got smooshed until he could lock on the Kimura for the finish.


This is me up against German in the Gi. Dude is SLICK. He got on top off of an opportunity generated by a berimbolo attempt and then setup a really smoothly executed collar choke. He went on to defeat Bagels in the Purple Belt absolute division.

Another match with Richard, at this point I was doing slightly stupid things trying to get past his deep half and he capitalized and finished me via kimura. No fun.

I think this match was actually before the match with Bagels. I'm really disappointed in myself when I watch this one. It's probably the only match that I look at and think 'WTF was I doing?!'. I seriously look like a whitebelt with my headhugging from halfguard bottom. I was sure I was going to be able to come out the back against the choke he had on me, then I adjusted slightly and started to tunnel so I had to tap.

So that's 9 matches, 9 losses. Not my finest tournament, but I acquired about 30 minutes of solid footage of my halfguard top and bottom game for me to analyze and work on which is what I'm currently doing. I really need to establish a stronger game plan from halfguard because I don't really have one now. I don't like deep half because I get kimuraed to hell and back almost every time I try to play it in the gym, but I'm going to revisit it with some tips I picked up watching Richard play it and see how it works out for me. Hopefully by March I'll have a halfguard game worthy of my belt rank to bust out at Wake Forest.

The tournament was completed and the places was cleaned up and the the truck loaded by about 6 pm. Once again everything ran incredibly smoothly. There were a handful of injuries (One nasty looking knee injury that turned out to be ok in the end) but nothing major. The rings ran smoothly, the officiating was great, and everyone was friendly as usual.

There was one strange incident where a guy got double-legged, cried out in pain and curled up on the mat like he had broken a rib or something, then when the medic went over to the ring he suddenly popped up like nothing happened and continued the match. No idea what that was about. Next up is Wake Forest on March 2nd.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Knee Sweeps, Leg Drags, and Dynamic Guard Passing

As part of my tournament prep work I've been focusing on two things, my defensive halfguard work, and my guard passing.
Largely my issues in halfguard have come from originally learning the 'lockdown' in my first year of training and latching onto it as a way not to get passed. As I get better at guard retention and open guard I drifted away from halfguard and never really updated my game. Once I hit purple belt all of a sudden my open guard game and my defensive guard work were no longer sufficient to avoid halfguard as reliably as had been the case in the past, so all of a sudden I was stuck using a whitebelt level lockdown game against purple belt level passing. Not a good place to be.
During my refocus on halfguard I quickly came to the conclusion that I no longer liked the lockdown at all. It pinned my hips and interfered with my mobility in a way that was counter to the entire rest of my game. I started exploring other halfguard options and found Caio Terra's DVDs and adopted the Knee Shield halfguard as more what I wanted to have in place. I also revisited Marcelo Garcia's X-Guard material and began working on ways to transition from Knee Shield half and Z-guard to the X-Guard. Progress has been slow but steady and already I'm getting bogged down in halfguard much less than I was a month ago.

Now, my halfguard progress is great, but that's not what I wanted to write about. My largest developmental improvement and the one that I think represents the larger fundamental shift in my thought process is in my guard passing.
After my last visit to Alliance HQ when EVERYONE was standing to pass I decided that I should give serious thought to standing more and working against standing passes. Only one guy at our affiliate gym REALLY uses standing passes, so I grabbed him a few times and worked against his style and took mental notes about how he moved and what he used to set the passes up, then I looked at some black belts and how they passed standing (Roberto "Cyborg" Abreu is a good one) and took some notes on what the commonalities of successful passing were. I then revised my own passing game and moved away from trying to force my knee cut passes when they weren't really there and developed a few tricks for backing out, standing, and passing.

My passing game now much more often involves looking for a leg drag, then if that fails I retain control of the foot as much as possible and move to a knee sweep pass (Dunno any other name for it), if that fails I frequently am setup for an ankle lock, or I am able to step in with my other leg and pass by moving to reverse KoB. I also switch back and forth a lot and pass to either side. This is a much more active and dynamic passing game than my previous game that involved a lot of pressure and grinding my way through to side control. I still like that method and use it, but having a more comfortable standing passing game has opened up a lot more options for me.
I'm hoping those new options will help me out at US Grappling Charlotte in May.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Halfguard is my new Home

I realize that I've been a little neglectful of posting, so this is probably going to be rather long while I try to catch up a bit.

My post tournament review of my performance showed me one enormous weakness in my game. My halfguard is terrible. It hasn't really changed since the first year I was training. As a whitebelt, against other whitebelts, I had a dangerous halfguard using the lockdown and whip-up to hit the oldschool sweep or pop out to dogfight and work from there. It hasn't evolved at ALL since then and the lockdown gets crushed at higher levels and especially in the absolute divisions with huge guys. It works well enough to stall for a minute or so, but I'm unable to work any sweeps from it anymore and reguarding against that kind of pressure from the lockdown is problematic.
Enter Caio Terra. Arguable (Not really, who the hell is going to argue against this?) the king of halfguard. The guy weighs about 140lbs and has tromped through some very high level blackbelts in the absolute divisions using halfguard as his primary weapon. So I picked up his DVD and I've watched the first 20 minutes of it. 10 times. It's incredibly detail heavy and full of material, so it's going to take me most of this year to absorb it I think.
I started working halfguard last night, pulling halfguard, allowing people to pass to halfguard, sweeping myself to the bottom of halfguard for them, etc... and working on establishing a knee shield and stretching my upper body away from my opponent. I had a bad habit of curling into them for no good reason and letting people get grips on my upper body. That must stop so I'm emphasizing keeping distance in half guard and establishing the knee shield right now. Where I go from there is a project for the weeks to come, but I did try a few things that worked decently well including establishing X-guard, reguarding, popping out to try to attack the back, trying to setup reverse scissor sweeps, and executing a technical stand with the cross collar grip to try to set up my loop choke. I'll continue to work on and refine those options over the next few months and hopefully by USG Charlotte in May my halfguard will be a lot stronger.

In other news the gym is getting more and more signups in our new location, which is awesome. And our boy Brian Hutchings, who you may remember as the guy that won his blue belt a couple of months ago at the Fight For Your Belt tournament, is going to be fighting in the main event at the first ever Muay Thai show in Madison Square garden this weekend. We're all wishing him the best of luck and as long as he keeps his chin down and his hands up I think he can bring home a belt. He's seriously a beast.

My buddy Johnny is running a Marathon this sunday, which I think is flatout insane. I wouldn't run 26 yards without a good reason, much less 26 miles. But he's also a monster and loves to challenge himself in any way he can. He's a 2 time Tough Mudder, finishing in about 3 hours both times.

Speaking of Johnny, he's been teaching wrestling takedowns for us on Wednesdays, which is awesome since I need more takedown practice and I'm getting a lot more comfortable going for them out of the clinch and stuff. I'm hoping that by USG Charlotte I'll be comfortable enough to make shooting for takedowns my go-to instead of pulling guard.

My medals and rashguards from USG Greensboro are on the way and I plan on taking a super obnoxious picture wearing one of the rashguards and every medal I've ever won and then having it printed out and posted up in the gym on the wall.

AAAaand finally I'm starting a video project for the gym where I video the technique instruction portion of each class and I'm going to set up a members only area for the Megalodon people and post the videos there so that we can all reference them later.

And that gets us mostly updated.