Saturday, March 28, 2009

Opening up a new can of worms

It was a mixed bag today as I feel I made some good progress this week but realized I’ve only begun to reexamine everything that needs reexamining and frankly have only examined things from the bottom in general lately.

It was one of those days that I felt like I shouldn’t train and ended up doing it anyway. Went against E and KT both of whom are super tough and very difficult to control in any position. This was a good test for some of the new theories I’m working on.

My conclusion so far is the new stuff works but reveals how much I need to analyze the rest of my game. My side control, especially from no gi is rudimentary at best. There are no real attacks and I’m always looking to mount or bait them onto their knees. With both of those guys and many others, this is definitely not a smart and energy conserving style on my part.

I was very tired after the training and really feel it was only the new open guard stuff I’ve been working on that allowed me to survive at all. Part of this may be my need to try to pass guard quickly. Sometimes I’m most likely rushing and they’re waiting until right when I pass then boom! they scramble. I may need to hang out in half guard a little bit more and cook them.

The other thing I’m thinking is to continue to apply the concept of making them constantly react and be catching up. I probably need to add more knee on stomach then switching to wrong knee to exhaust them a little.

The next idea is to keep them twisted in side control. I wasn’t using enough shoulder pressure on the chin to really prevent them from turning in. I think if I continue to focus on head/chin control and hip control I can become more effective in these positions. I’m just realizing how much of my game is predicated on them coming to their side, be it to D’Arce them or spin to their back.

Another idea is the triple attack or Hughes/Newton position. This is a great attack that I’ve all but ignored.

With all of this I want to start getting the feeling from side mount that I do when I have them in certain sitting guard positions where they have few options to move to and none of them are good. Right now I’m simply not doing that and it’s leaving me exhausted to get to the back or the mount where I do have that control.

I need to put together some drills and sequences to address this weakness. Thinking about it, I’m actually much better with the gi in this position, whereas almost everywhere else I still think I’m better no gi. I normally don't buy into the argument that the no gi game is faster etc. but it felt that way today and not in a good way to me.

I also think things like the Rigan twister and anything going around north/south would be good option to deal with the bucking bull syndrome.

Definitely an eye opening experience today as there’s a lot of work to be done.

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