For the most part I will not be having a post or thought session on each individual class/rolling session. I will tend to reserve mat reports for when I have breakthroughs or other special occasions. I want to reserve this blog for exciting moments and not simply a blow-by-blow account of my own journey. For the most part that would be incredibly boring and I highly doubt that my ability (or want) to write that often.
However, last night was a bit of an aberration. I live in a large geographic state that has a small population. For the most part if you have been grappling for more than a year you will know almost all of the purple and above belts. The word passes quickly when a new higher belted player moves into the state. That said last night a random, female, brown belt showed up to roll. This is "strange" on a few levels. First I believe that our state only has a few brown belts and as far as I know she is the highest ranked female belt in the state.
Exciting occurrences of brown belts aside there was a ton of learning in the rolls last night. When rolling with upper belts I have had problems with them "crushing" my butterfly hooks. Last night started the same way when rolling with a much larger/stronger blue belt who is a good friend of mine. He crushed my hooks and proceeded to crush me in side control.
Butterfly and Open Guard
After the roll he showed me a good defense to someone crushing your hooks. First, make sure your hooks are staying on their inner thighs. It is also important that you keep proper foot placement and your not putting your shins or higher on the thighs. This prevents them from completely putting your knees/legs together and accordingly making you helpless. Second, with proper hook placement, when they start to close their own legs put a hand on the back of their gi. It is most helpful if you can hook the back of their collar.
I put this defense into work the next few rolls. Against guys who habitually use this move against my hooks it was a big success. For the most part it sets up a reverse butterfly sweep pretty well. If they immediately back out you can establish a pretty dominant underhook with the arm you did not grip the collar with.
When rolling with the magically appearing brown belt I spent most of my time playing DLR. DLR is a guard that I have been trying to at least transition to lately. For the most part I am more concerned about getting to the position then I am about sweeping or taking the back at this point. I am testing my ability to control and at least force people to stop passing while standing.
I think it might be time to start asking upper belts about sweeps from DLR. The brown informed me that I have the control portion of DLR down pat. She insisted that I should start looking at how to unbalance the other player in DLR and start moving for sweeps or getting to the sit up guard.
Focusing on Basics
Another major portion of my training at this point is focusing on basics - especially when escaping side and mount control. Too often lately I have been using poor form when escaping side mount - I have been attempting to hit sweeps without getting a good base setup first. Furthermore, I have been shrimping very poorly.
With that in mind, I rolled twice with my instructor. For the most part I did pretty well in setting up my base and shrimping properly.
Closing Thoughts
I really feel like my game is starting to open up more against colored belts. While there are times I am just trying to survive there are times I feel like I am at least neutralizing the offense of upper belts. Most encouraging is that I am starting to have a bit offense against colored belts. I think (hope?!?) that this offense comes from using good basics like moving my hips and chaining movements together.
In that vein last night, in a roll against my instructor, it felt as if all things came together. While he was obviously not going 100 percent and was letting me work my game a bit I felt like I was moving well and "seeing" a step ahead. I felt pressure to pass my closed guard coming and used it to set up an omoplata. From there, I understood that he may have baited it with the idea that he would just "outspin" or "flip faster" than I could get proper control. I made sure to use a little weight on his arm and proper seat belt control on his hips to prevent this. While I was not able to finish the submission, I did use it as an opportunity to take mount when he escaped.
What I should be working on:
Still need to link techniques - especially sweeps from butterfly and closed - together to make them more effective
Basic DLR sweeps
Breathing
Butterfly
No comments:
Post a Comment