Tuesday, December 29, 2015

December 29th 2015 - No Gi All Levels

Theme & Techniques: Deep Half Intro
Partner: Mike A, Jordan A, Dave M, Morgan, Tom, Ben, Tyler

Great turn out for our noon class today!  I decided to try my hand at introducing a position that I feel competent in but many have no experience with.  I've taught the position to a few people like Mo so I had down how I wanted to teach it.

I showed the basic way for using a knee shield to help get an underhook then bypassing the cross face to get your head close to their body.  Next, and this is the tough part, you straighten their leg as you bring yourself under them.  Finally the importance of hand positions with hugging onto their thigh tightly and burying your free hand under their knee.  What I should have mentioned and will mention in the future when I teach this is that the top person also has to be a little active.  All too often the top guys goes with the flow letting the bottom guy work and is swept way easier than they should by the bottom guy just trying to get into the deep half position.  So we had to break for a little while and tell the top guys to base out with their hands a bit and try to stay up.

Everyone was having a little trouble getting underneath their opponent, so I thought I might simplify the entry and teach it as the mount escape.  This is actually a pretty high percentage mount escape for me that I hit often.  You start with getting quarter guard from the bottom of mount.  From their you use a teeter totter motion to get them to raise their knee a little off the floor, this should provide enough space to work with.  From here I put my opposite elbow to the floor and eventually reach around their leg and walk my feet out in a circle to straight their leg into the deep half.  Teaching it this way seemed to help get people into the position quicker without a lot of extra movements.

Finally, I taught the Homer Simpson sweep.  One of the things everyone had to get over was wanting to triangle their legs in some way to keep control of their opponents leg.  You need your feet on the floor for the most mobility.  The next big thing to focus on for this sweep is you want to get them to put their butt on the floor and making that a trigger for when you roll to the top to complete the sweep.  Mike and I were both impressed that everyone was getting it by the end.   

Rolling: Half Guard King of the Mat
Rolled With: Everyone

When I was on the bottom I made it a mission to try to get to deep half on everyone and try to show the position off.  I succeeded quite a few times and was happy with my rolling.  I also witnessed a few people attempt deep half and some complete the sweep, this really makes my day.  I would also suspect that at least 1 of them is going to use the mount escape that I taught, can't wait to see that.

Office Hours Partner: Mike

Watched Mike and Morgan roll for a while and we are both impressed with his progress.  He's one of the few that will hang out after class and is willing to ask questions and find answers to problems that he's running into while grappling.  Then Mike and I rolled and we ended up in a leg lock battle a couple times.  I mentioned afterward that I'm still having some trouble figuring out when to focus on defense and when to switch to offense.  I am enjoying this process though and feel like I've already gotten my feet wet with foot locks but have so much to learn.  The main tidbit today was finishing the heelhook in the 50/50.  He told me to pinch my knees together right above his knee and then to stretch out his leg instead of trying to compress it all.  Then I needed to sit up and turn to get the best position on the heel.

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