Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Revisiting the basics part 2: The X Guard

I remember getting exposed to this guard 10 plus years ago by Ethan Milius. Back then it was a follow up to a failed butterfly sweep. I wasn’t ready for that technique and even though I could drill it, I rarely ever hit it.

I pretty much ignored it for the next few years but rediscovered it when I came out to Texas. My instructor here had a different version with one foot controlling the instep of the opponent instead of the upper thigh.

I started playing around with this new version and liked some of the dexterity it brought to the picture to set up leg locks and sweeps that were more balling up oriented rather than stretching out.

I used this game a lot as a purple belt against some of the bigger guys. It was especially effective against wrestlers, as I don’t think there are too many situations in a wrestling match where competitors would find themselves in this position.

Then for some reason I stopped playing this game completely. It might have been that I wanted to develop more submissions from the bottom and ventured into other things. I don’t remember it being any conscious decision, but I look back at the last few years of training and can only think of a handful of times that I’ve used x-guard to any degree.

All of this information has been flooding in my head over the last few hours as I think about my training session with JS yesterday. His game has gotten so good that I can’t decide if starting on the bottom of half guard is a brave gesture, an exercise in stupidity or some sadistic urge I have to make myself seem chumpy.

I wanted to focus on the omoplata battle but his head was in a different position. He was moving more to a reverse kesa type pass. I kept flailing trying to force the situation that we'd been working on the previous day rather than truly accepting the reality of what was happening. With a guy like him, this becomes a punishing and humbling experience as indecision makes surviving a freight train unlikely.

I had no real strategy because I had no real idea of attack. One of the main flaws in my thinking was not coordinating my upper body and lower body.

My instructor suggested I think about x guard from this position and at first I felt even more lost. It had been so long I didn’t even see how I could get there. He showed me some sweep variations that weren’t X in the strictest sense but had the same principles.

I was annoyed with myself after training. I felt like I’d just been a flailing spazz for an hour and that belt was just staring me in the face, disappointed. But I realized the lesson had been learned. I needed to delve back into the X guard.

After looking at my book and a ton of videos, I realized that the half guard position does have an x guard set up to it. I’d just never really drilled it. In fact, x guard has always worked well for me, once I got there. But I haven’t practiced getting there enough. This is why it came and went for me as without drilling sequences, I'll never go to them when the chips are down.

I'll need to work on the timing and sensitivity down the road, but for now I don’t even have enough reps in to warrant that. For now, I need simple repetition. After working on entries over and over, I'll start to recognize them in live training. In fact, I can already think of at least four times in yesterday's session where I could have transitioned to X guard.

As long as frustration ends in a lesson, I'll always take it.

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