A bitch to sweep

A man wants to walk across the land, but the earth is covered with thorns. He has two options- one is to pave his road, to tame all of nature into compliance. The other is to make sandals.  Making sandals is the internal solution. Like the Soft Zone, it does not base success on a submissive world.  - Josh Waitzkin, “The Art Of Learning”

End day 4 of JJJC, and I'm already starting to fret a bit about the possibility of my brain getting overloaded, LOL.

I almost wimped out of evening class; I was tired- but I dragged myself in. I admit that it was partially because I was excited to report back to Adrian that I have been hitting his gi tail baseball bat sub on everybody and their sister. I only stayed for 4:30 basics.

I'm very happy I went in; it was just the teachers plus me and Albert- I love it when this type of thing happens, and you get essentially a private. Also, what we worked on- I think this is an important piece for me.

From spider guard: Get sleeve cuff grips, get one standard spider guard foot-on-the-bicep, circle the other foot to the OUTSIDE and hook the toe very high on the back of opponent's bicep. Not quite in the armpit. Make sure all this is nice and snug. Opponent should not be able to move hir arms around. 

That second leg is what I have been missing- I frequently get spider guard with both feet on the biceps, and I can hold it and hip all over the place and monkey around for a while and feel very comfy, but colored belts will eventually pass. Now I will start working with that second foot behind the bicep, and see what else I can do with it. (LEVEL-UP!) As an open guard player, anything I can do to level-up my spider guard is big.

Anyway: Although of course pushing the bicep-stepped foot to the ceiling to sweep is the standard, surprisingly you can do it either way. I have worked a few spider guard sweeps before, and always swept the opponent in a sideways cartwheeling motion. With this one, since the opponent has both feet free to move around and post, you really want to sweep hir either directly over your head or slightly diagonal- definitely aiming to face-plant hir somewhere above your shoulders.

Just keep everything tight, go down with one foot and up with the other, and bring your feet forward. If it doesn't work, edge your butt underneath hir more. As you sweep, you roll as well and come up on top.  The sweep will also work if the opponent is on one or both knees.

Albert drilled first, tried for a good while and utterly failed. There was a lot of pressure on my biceps- and for a while it felt like he was trying to pull me in half- but my balance was going nowhere. I didn't want to just stand there like a doofus while he struggled in vain, but remember- sweeps not my forte, and I had not the skill to ID what he was doing wrong.

Eventually Adrian took him away and JP came over to drill with me- "Maybe you're just a bitch to sweep," Well, lo and behold... yeah.... I appear to simply be a bitch to sweep from this position. He managed it a few times, but he struggled a lot. Again with the pressure on the biceps (owie!) The few successes were painful crash-landing faceplants for me. I said, "I'm not actively resisting... I'm not trying to be a dick or anything." and I wasn't. I'm a cooperative drill partner. But seriously, I did not feel myself being tipped.

After all this, when my turn came, I was filled with anxiety and pretty sure it would not work... but it did. I don't like the "unorthodox" side much, but it's nice to have that as an option to suddenly switch to if the guy is straining against Plan A. Also, I doubt I'm going to be able to make this work against a strong heavy guy who is resisting. But I'll have to see if I can come up with any chances to try it in the next couple weeks.

The final 1/3 of class was just me and JP rolling, and that was not quite so much fun. He was muscling, subbed me over and over, and spent a lot of the time front mounted on me. I also had a knee up in his guard a lot- I wasn't *trying* to grind his balls or anything (again, I am a considerate partner), but the rougher we got and the more I tapped, the less inclined I became to deliberately go out of my way to give up position just to be nice and redirect my knee from his groin.  I'm not sure if he was going rougher because he thought I was doing that on purpose.