So Thursday’s training rather sucked. To make up for the fact I had missed so much time, I decided to train at lunch time and again in the evening.
During the lunch session, we worked on escapes from cross body or standard side control where the knees are tight into the guy on the bottom. Our primary escape involved bridging over the shoulder and into the opponent. After we create the space with the bridge, we then hip out and re-establish guard.
The escape is a very effective one and I really wish I had kept it in mind during my last match when I had the “building” fall into side control on me. The key to it is actually bridging deep and over the shoulder as opposed to bridging backward or doing a lazy bridge. I tried doing the lazy bridge thing during our up/down/out drills with very mixed results. One guy got the mount on me because he simply neutralized me.
When I really bridged hard and over the one side, I was always able to replace my full guard or my half guard because there was enough space.
When I was on top, I felt better. I actually worked on transitioning different attacks from side control. Still not feeling very comfortable trying to go for my knee on belly, but at least I’m trying. And for me, that’s a significant improvement.
After class, I hung around for some open mat training. I wanted to use the opportunity to work on some of my half guard musings from earlier in the week. Flattening my opponent definitely worked every single time. Some of the submission ideas I had didn’t work very well, but at least I was getting the pass. So that was good. I was definitely a lot more aware of what my knee was doing.
During the evening class, only two of us showed up for advanced class. Needless to say, the training was very focused, hard and painful as we worked on standing in closed guard with good posture. Actually, standing would have been nice. Jumping to the position and then lifting our opponent into our chair was rather exhausting. Curling upward to grab the head, and then falling from chest level also helped create a bruising opportunity. Needless to say, a couple days of rest were definitely called for. And tequila was my medicine of choice.
In all fairness, the drills were definitely needed. I have avoided doing any sort of standing in the closed guard due to all of the sweeps we’ve previously drilled. But this was different, and quite effective. And I’m learning to simply step out of the hooked heel if someone tries to go for the sweep.
Keeping good posture is definitely necessary, and quite a challenge– especially as I found myself getting more and more tired. And balance wasn’t a natural thing for me. The good news is that getting the pass was quite easy as we would simply reach around with our free hand and unlock the bottom foot. The other hand was applying pressure on the belly to keep the guy from posturing up.
I was hoping to get some training in at the Gracie Barra school just 10 minutes from where I’ve been staying. However, with my ribs feeling so banged up, my big toe being dislocated and with my hips really aching, I decided to take the days off. And with school being closed on Monday, I’ll be getting an extra day of rest and one less day of no-gi training this week.
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