Today was a lot better than yesterday. I got to class fairly early and took some initiative of my own to get some work done. I met Thomas for the first time, and he agreed to practice the guard pass/mount escape drill that Ernie showed me yesterday. Thomas showed me the escape from the mounted position, using the Gable grip to break down the opponent's posture, hooking the near heel with the leg, and rolling out of mount into their guard. I then passed guard and we cycled through again.
Guard passing was the order of the day, and Ralil stressed the need to use multiple passing tactics based on the opponent's defense. We began with the basic guard passes: sliding around to side control, the various knee-through methods, and the stacking pass. Then we worked scenarios for a blocked pass, requiring a change of tactics.
Ralil showed Luke and me the common escape from side control, using the upa to the hip escape, followed by bringing the leg across to recover guard. I did pretty poorly at this and I will have to practice my hip escape so that I can create more space for bringing my leg across.
To wrap up class, I rolled with Damon, who had his fingers taped after his injury on Friday. His strength was undiminished, however, and he worked me pretty hard. Armbar, Kimura, armbar. He showed me a good armbar defense when you are in his guard-- take the elbow of your vulnerable arm and drive it into his navel, and cup your chin as if you're really thinking hard. Then you can try to pass guard by getting your other arm inside his leg and getting a knee over.
Fernando was game again, and I grudgingly obliged him. His reasoning was that he had to beat me now, before I "got too good." I almost immediately put him into a Brabo choke from our knees and he tapped quick-- too easy. We went again and I armbarred him instinctively; it was pretty cool. He got me once when I slipped off a second attempt at the Brabo. Afterwards, he mumbled about "not rolling with me anymore." Heh. I felt bad for taking it to a much smaller guy, but I wasn't going to roll over for him, and he challenged me, to boot. I admire his pluck and I'm glad I didn't injure him.
Next goal: perform a submission on someone in my weight class.
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Day 7: Feelin' good's good enough
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2 comments:
Personally, I'd advise that your goal should be get good positional skills first.
Submissions are cool and all, but much better to feel comfortable that if you get into a bad position, you have a good idea of how to get out of it (and can practice that until you can regularly escape). Conversely, after you've worked hard at learning how to reach - and hold - a dominant position, you'll be right where you want to be for submissions. And if you mess up the submission...you can use your positional ability to set yourself up to try again.
At least that's how I try to approach training - I'm a lowly white belt myself, so take that for what it's worth. ;D
Thanks for the advice, slideyfoot. I'll work on position before submission, as they say. Cheers!
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