Rolled with a new student and my instructor today. With the new student wanted to work some different controls. One was from the closed guard keeping his right arm across his body and blocking it with my hip. I wanted to feel exactly where my hip needs to be in order to control the position. It felt like as long as my left foot was pushing against his right hip and my right hip blocked his elbow, it would be difficult for him to get his arm out.
The next position I wanted to work on was cross body armlock control. Years ago I believed that grabbing the guys leg was the key to controlling him. So if I’m armlocking his right arm, I’d want to grab his right leg with my right arm. While this does make it hard for him to sit up or bridge over his shoulder and roll out, it’s also pretty tough to break the grip. The bicep crush has always been tough with my long legs and unless I can get a foot on his bicep, I used to spend a lot of energy trying to break the grip.
These days I’m much more about pulling his arm aboive his head and twisting it as basically it’s my whole body against his internal rotator cuff. But the dilemma is how to control the guy. More and more I’m thinking it’s his far arm and shoulder that’s the key. So today I was alternately cupping and pressing his left elbow. This really seems to limit his mobility and weaken his grip at the same time. I’ll need to play around more with that.
Working with my instructor is always very helpful and humbling. I’m still really enjoying the sitting guard with proper head placement. Got an underhook with my left arm and he immediately started to armpit Americana it. Foolishly I persisted with the sweep anyway. Really in that case I should acknowledge and defend the attack first, which in this case would be headlocking his wrist. That leads to a sweep in the other direction.
I also had a hint that the pin escapes I learned could really work as I did see some space when I rolled my hips away and punched, but I didn’t base properly with my far arm and even if I did, I won’t be able to pull off that move on him. I do really need to drill those more or put myself in that situation with someone a little smaller to start getting the proper feel and timing.
I still have little ideas on how to maintain standing posture without risking my arms. Once he gets a grip I’m done for. It makes me see that I need to start doing that attack myself in open guard but maybe I should try to slide my knee through to half guard.
Also realized the importance of rolling to my stomach on straight ankle locks and also trying to control the same side arm that you’re ankle locking. This makes it much easier to get them over as now they have nothing to base on.
Things done well
1) Closed guard control
a. I felt like the arm across the stomach, taking their back option is really something that could work for me. I think the set up is coming along pretty well and today was about the mid point control. The next step is to work on shift around the corner.
b. Did bait him into stepping over my leg which made getting the back even easier. Learned that by watching Renner teach it.
2) Ab wheel
a. The drilling on this is paying off as I’m scooting out and changing my hip angle as soon as they grab my knees.
3) Changing hip angle from sitting.
a. If they start trying to go around my hook side I can switch hip angles and work and armdrag. It’s much more controlled than they type I was doing before and my leg can go to the inside or it can transfer to x guard pretty easily.
Things to work on
1) Pin escape drills
a. I see the light but I need to practice more.
2) Straight ankle locks
a. I want to develop the same sense of control that I have with the cross body arm lock. Have some decent set ups but the finish, especially rotating to my stomach, needs work
3) Taking the blinders off
a. Still catching myself going for the attack I intended rather than acknowledging what’s there.
No comments:
Post a Comment