March 22nd 2015 - Weekly Review

Focus of the Week: Bottom - Deep Half Back Takes & Waiter Sweep, Top - Spiral Armbar, Back Takes

Theme & Techniques
Beginner/All Levels: Guillotine defense against wall, Basic guard break,  Double Under Pass
Partnered and Rolled With: Sam, Zack, Greg, Justin, Austin, Anthony

Everyone I worked with seemed to have some trouble with the guillotine defense.  It mostly boiled down to trouble with gaining and maintaining posture.  Usually if I tell someone to scrape the opponent up the wall it solves the problems.  I think they just want to lift their head back with using their neck instead of moving up and into the opponent.

For the guard break I've been trying to make it as slick as possible.  I start each time with hands at the sides and then go.  Lapels together, straighten arm, hand on the label, elbow inside, raise body with shoulder over hand, slide knee to sit bone, other knee goes back and twist to open.  I'm trying to get rid of all unnecessary motions so as soon as I get my grip it should just happen.

On Tuesday, I asked Zack to work on a mini-pendulum sweep that I saw in a video recently.  It worked pretty well and Greg made a few minor changes to make it better.  This may be a new addition for me.  We worked on some followups for if they defend by basing their hand out and it has a lot of good options.  Zack wanted to work on some half guard and getting the underhook.  We kind of messed around with it and rolled a bit.

On Friday, Greg showed him some harness grip back mount recovery techniques that we both worked on a bit.  The big takeaway was the first hook to put in should be of the choking arm not the underhook arm. 

Zack wanted to work half guard bottom more.  I suggested that he should use his legs to affect my balance more rather than just triangling them and just using his arms to fight.  I felt pretty good teaching that stuff and felt smooth as I was demonstrating it.  Hopefully the points that I was trying to make made sense.

Open Mat
Rolled With: Jerad, Dwight, Bhuvana, Mike (Tumbleweed)

I didn't get to roll with as many people as I would have liked Saturday.  When I was free it seemed like everyone was changing and leaving or rolling with someone else.  It seems like there are more and more people that I never roll with and I'm not sure why that is.

Jerad: We slow rolled a bit to get warmed up.  I felt uncoordinated and did some silly things that didn't quite workout but I guess that's what it's for.  We had 2 or 3 good rolls.  He dominated the first although there were some good points.  The second I was on top and attacking from side control for a while.  I ended up getting reversed from the position and spent the rest of the time defending.  His mount is very difficult to escape and I commented on it later that he's able to squeeze his knee together more than anyone else that I roll with.  Which prevents mount escapes and prevents me from entering deep half guard.

Dwight: We rolled gi this time and I started in guard every time and played some butterfly, closed, and some open.  He was good at stepping over my head whenever I went for an omoplata and kind of nullified that game.  I had some success with butterfly sweep though.  I caught him with a few things and we got in some good rolling.

Bhuvana: I had a couple of goals to take her back or go to deep half if the situation presented itself.  I never was able to take her back completely.  I did have mount and side mount and was working toward a few things but she seemed to be a little timid today and tapped early a few times.  Then we would discuss where she was and if she really needed to tap.  She allowed me to work on the waiter sweep a few times, it's a little difficult working with someone who doesn't know deep half guard because she fell over pretty easily the first few times. 

Mike: He had me from the get go.  He started with a cartwheel pass that I kind of scoffed at, but it put him on my back and I was defending from then on out.  I never really did get him off my back except for a short stint in an inverted triangle.  He eventually got me with a wristlock and seemed pleased as I usually don't tap to those.

We went over an interesting back mount arm trap that I think I'm going to develop myself.  It's kicking the leg over the underhooked arm but turning your body before hand to get a different angle on the kick and hooking your leg behind them.  I can definitely see the value in it.