45 degree angles, ab wheels and recumbent bikes

4/5/09
Took a few more days off and got some much needed rest. Worked with my buddy T today on more of the recumbent bike/ ab wheel concept. Definitely like where it’s headed but he presented some new challenges that I’ll need to address.

The first area is when he crosses my legs over my centerline. At times it felt like I should just go in that direction and roll all the way through. At other times it felt like I should use his pushing momentum to plant my other foot and change the angle of my hips. And other times I thought I should use the momentum to stiff arm him and change the angle with my upper body rather than my lower.

In any case, the principal is the same with each situation: keep my hips lined up with him and my whole body lined up with itself.
All this stuff is still in the lab stage but what I like about the feedback so far is when it doesn’t work, it feels wrong. And it usually feels that way first. This is a nice feedback mechanism as it really makes me realize every time I tense up, I’m taking the wrong path.

While the “bike” techniques work well, the other thing I’m noticing that it makes my opponent open up his neck as he instinctually wants to keep his head up to try to regain his base. This makes the guillotine a good option for attacks or as a distraction to get him to grab your arm and thus making it easier to get a sweep.

The one thing I’m going to really need to worry about is him trapping my straight leg in half guard and working towards a knee bar. However at the same time having the other knee bent and ready to straighten it seems like it may be hard for him to get the necessary control. Still I could feel that it might be there at times.

The next thing I noticed is that once people become wise to the fact that it is hard for them to pin the legs they tend to hold the legs but not put weight on them. It might be a good time to break the grip and sit up. But at the same time they might use that as bait and when I start to reach for their hand they could pull my leg out to the side and spin me. I’m not entirely sure if that would work but sitting here thinking about it, it seems like a possibility.

DS should be healthy soon and will bring a whole new painful level of learning to what I’m doing. I’m confident in the principals of this but still when the angles become more 45 degrees and the opponent going from side to side that could be a problem.

That being said I’m convinced if his base is disrupted right from the beginning, he shouldn’t be able to push off to move to the next side.

More and more I’m seeing both the opportunities and importance of always changing angles before someone really establishes a base, pin and control. And I’m seeing this quite a bit from half guard as well. I’m starting to picture that position to be mainly transitional in nature when it becomes disrupting his base, then going for a sweep, triangle, taking the back etc.

I’m also interested in the idea of trying to get as many arm lock attacks as possible on 45 degree angles over the opponent’s shoulder.

I’m finding that from closed guard the regular pendulum sweep works much better if I focus on going over their far shoulder rather than to their side. But also I’m seeing that going over the shoulder makes the person naturally want to put that shoulder side hand out to prevent themselves from falling over.

It’s like trying to fall or roll onto your chest from your knees without using your hands. Very few people can do it at first as you just want and feel like you have to put that hand out.

So taking that reaction into account if I really secure the arm and keep the angle over their shoulder, they naturally want to post to prevent their head from smacking into the ground. But when they post, that hand can’t be used to help defend the armbar on the trapped arm.

And I’m also finding that once I get that position it’s a matter of focusing on my alignment, so I keep the arm secure and get my knees and hips in line. Usually it means almost backing my body away. This puts me at a stronger angle as my legs are lined up and a little straighter.
For the opponent it pushes his head into the mat. If he rolls to relieve the pressure, it straightens his arm even more. If he tries to roll in he’s using rotational power against my leg press so the odds are probably in my favor on that.

This is making me really want to explore the concept more of getting a good 45 degree angle myself then line up my body from there and see what offense results.

One of my training partners did this last week when he had my arm across from his closed guard. My hand was clamped in his armpit and the control was really impressive. I think if he’d have kept that control and lined his body up with my arms some really interesting attacks would have resulted.

Much to learn and much to mess with as always.