This was my first opponent on Saturday.... seriously. And Tiffany looked even scarier!
ROFL... from Side Control's training blog:
"After the Revolution, I ate nothing but cupcakes and pizza for 24 hours."
While it was great to oink out after the tournament, I must admit that my digestive system was somewhat taken aback to be bombed with all that junk after three austere months of chicken breasts, eggs and carrots. And I was already back up to 130 this morning.
Tuesday morning at Cindy's. Lamont is out of town. It was just me and the Russian blue belt guy (I forget his name... geez...I'm so bad.... I'm lucky if I remember my *OWN* name....) from last week.
Cindy says that she doesn't want to referee any more at tournaments..... it sucks too much time,
and she feels that she can't take care of her competitors as well as she'd like to. Apparently a big teenage man-boy was roughing up one of her little female 12-year-old white belts on the next mat while she was reffing a match, and that was a bad position for her. Also, she might be able to keep better tabs on me and try to get me to my match in time!
I told her that I want to work really hard on getting out of bottom half guard... both learning techniques and drilling repeatedly on them.
We started with the foot crossover escape from front mount into half guard. This is one of the first things I ever learned (and also one of the first things I taught my three little white belts)- I use it all the time, and have great success with it. But of course once we started breaking it down, I found that I am sloppy with a number of small details.
It is always very frustrating to me to have to go back and fix little things on a technique I've been doing for a long time... retracing my steps and having to go SLOWER and more clumsily. Having to undo ingrained bad habits. For a while, the technique doesn't work nearly as well as it did to BEGIN with, and that drives me nuts. But I know it will be even better in the end if I can fix these details.
In this case, the problems start immediately with the little turn onto my side. I tend to do a dramatic jerking turn with a shrimp out. It was brought to my attention that I am practically giving my opponent my back. I need to do a quarter-turn ONLY, and keep my distal leg flat on the floor. NO SHRIMPING! I had a really hard time grasping that... finally Cindy had to actually sit on my shin and pin it down to stop me from doing that.
Next problem- vulnerable extended arms and elbows. I have a bad habit of pulling my top elbow out and having it waving right in the opponent's face as if to say, "Please armbar me". Keep the elbows against the ribs and use the elbows to push the opponent's knee down. This is safer than my method of putting my hands on the knee and straight-arming it down.
Improvement point number three: Get the underhook *as* you're shrimping your butt out. Do not reach both arms across the opponent's body and be fiddling around over there and then remember, "oh yeah, the underhook," and then try to bring the arm back over. Just plan ahead, leave the arm on the correct side and get the underhook immediately.
Hint number four: Use the other hand to brace the opponent's arm so s/he can't crossface you out.
I need to drill this every class, until the improved version is more instinctual than the sloppy version I've been doing up till now.
So now that we have half guard, Option B (Option A being the one I worked on with Lindsey on Sunday):
Opponent tries to headlock you.
1)Make sure the legs are locked down with the toe hooked in (I had not been doing that part), and try to stretch the person out. (This hurts, already- if you're on the recieving end). Make sure your thigh is right under the opponent's buttock.
2)transfer your grip to the wrist that is headlocking you.
3a)Powerful shrug of the shoulder (the one you are underhooking with)- at the same time,
3b)Accordion your entire body several times rapidly like a dog humping the opponent's leg.
If your thigh is right under hir butt where it's supposed to be, that will jar the opponent's balance all over the place while you're pulling your head out under your shoulder shrug.
You can stick the hand on your underhooking arm in the opponent's armpit and push if that helps.
4)reposition the grip on the wrist and post ON IT... don't let it go and post on the floor. As you pull your hip and leg out just enough to take the back.
5)Now underhook the far arm and get that second wrist- roll the opponent's hands under hir as you arch into back mount. If you do this correctly, the opponent's hands are trapped underneath hir (palm up- painful and completely useless) while s/he is faceplanting into the mat and getting hir spine torqued in an unpleasant fashion. This is not a happy place to be on the recieving end. I still remember the very first time Cindy ever did this to me in a demo. Holy crap.
We also did some reps of this starting from side control... the person on top transitioned from side control to mount, and the person on bottom caught half guard immediately (before the mounting person can get their points, even) and went into the technique sequence.
Option C: Opponent grabs a whizzer to try to keep you from going to the back.
1) Clamp onto the arm that they're whizzering you with and glue it to your chest.
2) Everything the same, including careful positioning of toe hook and thigh-to-butt.
3)Instead of controlling the opponent's other wrist with your free hand, underhook the ankle. Note: You are *NOT* going into deep half guard- not pulling you to hir, you are pulling hir to YOU.
4)Roll opponent first UP and then OVER your own body. S/he can't post because you have the whizzering arm clamped to your chest.
We repped all this till we were exhausted, and no time for sparring (Thank goodness; I was too tired anyway). These methods are going to be good, though. Cindy expressly did *not* want to work on techniques that have me replacing full guard from half guard, because she wants me to get **OUT** from under. Good deal.
Later...................
Tuesday evening BJJ in Bellevue. To my great relief, Carlos did not act as if he was only fifty percent invested in teaching me. He treated me the same as he always does. I didn't get a chance to thank him for being so supportive this weekend, but I will make sure to do that. I did get a chance to thank Pat. Pat said of my first match, "You almost had her! You were THIS close!" I don't know what match *he* was watching, LOL! He did have a specific suggestion, though, which I wasn't quite able to parse by his verbal description- so I asked if he would go over that with me the next time we were both on the mat (he was in street clothes).
I asked Ron about his competition; he lost the first fight by points in overtime, but he doesn't think the scoring was quite fair. He won his "consolation" match.
We attacked the turtle tonight. Person 1 in turtle, person 2 sprawled on top in north-south. Wrap your arms around the turtle's chest like a sash (over one shoulder), and hop to a side-to-side position. Switch grips to lapels (now you are under both of the turtle's arms), make a little hop to place your FAR hip beside hir hip. You are now sitting on your butt with your other knee pointed at the ceiling. Now pull the turtle into your lap, get hooks, and do the sash-hug again. Linger long enough to get your points for back mount. Then RNC.
That's the only drill we did, then a whole bunch of positional training from turtle with rotating partners. I did okay, although I had mixed success trying to integrate the changes from this morning into my mount escape to half guard. I knew that they would start to go out the window as soon as the speed and resistance was factored back in, and they did. More drilling needed.
I sat out and watched the advanced class. They were doing a complex-looking cross-collar gi choke which I think I made the right decision to not attempt. Then takedown relays.
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