Mizblog

We had all 3 black belt instructors on the mat, and 3 students (Cowboy, me, and Jeremy). We learned a LOT!

We started out going over how to recover guard from turtle when you’re sprawled on. Get your head up on one side, step forward a foot on the opposite side, so you can shoot your other foot between their legs to establish half guard and keep moving to get to a more secure guard. The key detail I learned from today’s lesson is that you kind of flop onto your side in order to get that second foot through. If you need to hang out in turtle for a second, get a grip on their knees so if they try to go around you, you can follow them. The grip also helps you thread that foot through to re-establish your guard.

Next we learned how to use turtle as a transitional position when your guard is being passed. When they’re coming around your legs, you can brace their hips away with your far arm as you basically pull your legs back to turtle while facing them, then recover guard by stepping in on the same side you just stepped out of, only now you’re at a different angle and should have space to recover your guard. I need to practice this one a lot, because not only do I get into turtle a lot, but I get my guard passed a lot. It seems I can use the technique for getting out of turtle to recover my guard just as I’m losing it, which is great! Mark said it makes the top guy feel like he’s trying to wrestle an exercise ball when the bottom guy moves like this, and Christian does it all the time. I’ve felt that way myself (that Christian moves around under me like an exercise ball) so I found Mark’s report highly relatable.

Next we learned the small sausage roll recovery. Again, passing the guard, bracing their hip with your far hand, you drop that far shoulder to the mat away from them as you roll your legs into them to recover your guard. I felt super awkward with this one, but it’s basically like the baby granby roll that Andrew once did to me when he turtled. The first time I tried it, I rolled away and got my back taken. Don’t roll away! You move your shoulder away so you can roll your legs toward your opponent to recover guard.

Next we learned the big sausage roll, which I understood better. This is from a low guard pass, where they’re pinning your legs down. Now you’re framing on their head or shoulder to keep them from getting to your hips. From there, you’re flopping away onto your belly and pulling yourself away on the mat with your arms (like an Army crawl move) before continuing the roll to get your feet back in front of you. Cowboy kept insisting that I recover a better position than just lying on my back with my legs pointing toward my opponent. He’s right – I’ve got some lazy habits I need to work out, and this is one of them. I just lie back on my back. Instead, I need to sit up with my shoulders over or forward of my hips, with my hands up to guard myself.

Once we finished with the guard recovery, it’s a good idea to jump directly into a sweep as soon as your opponent settles into your guard, and the first sweep we went over was the arm drag. This is one I’ve learned before but it’s been a LONG time (2 years maybe?) so I was rusty at it. Basically, you get a cross collar grip with an open guard. The with your leg on the same side as the arm your cross gripping with, you put it on their knee to trip them. Then you yank them forward hard as you scoot your hips away from that leg, leaving it behind as a trip log. They come forward and have to post so as to not land on their face, and that gives you the chance to get on their back.

If that doesn’t work, you can do a long scissor sweep. This time, maybe they’re grabbing your pants. You’ve got their cross collar again, but now you also want to grip their sleeve on the same side as your collar grip (basically holding the arm by both ends, I guess). You kick off their knee grip by pulling the sleeve and kicking your leg straight, and then you fall to that same side so the extended leg goes alongside their leg. Your other knee will come up, and you bring it to your collar gripping hand, with your foot at the hip. Basically, like the regular scissor sweep, you steer them over with your hands turning the wheel, but because it’s long and they’ll be all stretched out from the pull, you’ll mostly be scissoring your legs to get them over. I had a good feel for this one already, and I even remembered to keep hold of the arm as I finished the sweep.

Mark interjected that both of these sweeps can be done with just the collar grip if you can catch the opponent at the right moment in the scramble.

So what if you come out of your recovery and they’re crowding you? Well, establish a butterfly guard and sweep them that way. Butterfly guard starts by sitting into them and getting a STRONG over-under grip. Especially the underhook. With your feet, you turn your toes up as you press your shins into their thighs to get them off their base and spread out. Then you can just fall onto your side away from your underhook, lifting their leg on the underhook side to get them to fall. Unless they’re basing their hands out to stop the roll, like Greggo did later, but I’ll get to that. You can end the sweep either in mount (where you’ll want to use your underhook to extend their arm above their mounted head) or in a modified kesa gatame with the far side underhook.

Then we rolled some short 3 minute rounds. I started rolling with Greggo, who let me start with the butterfly guard. I tried to do the sweep of the day, but he posted his hands. So I went to kimura one of his posted arms, and we rolled around until we got off the mat. It was a good roll, but purely instructional from Greggo’s perspective. He was letting me do things and coaching me the whole time, which I greatly appreciate. I know he could wreck me quickly if he wanted to.

My next roll was with Cowboy. He also adopted a coaching approach with me. Probably because I’m so bad, it’s obvious how I need to improve, but he was very supportive and helpful. He set me up for all the moves of the day. I did the long sausage roll escape and recovered into the long scissor sweep. Nice! He also coached me through the cross collar choke when I’m in guard, telling me to hang my upper body weight off his neck to finish properly.

After that I rolled with Jeremy. We started on the knees, and I pulled guard. He tried a standing pass and I pendulum swept him to mount and finished with a cross collar choke. Next time I also pulled guard, but he passed to side control. I was in the process of sweeping him when he said that he hurt himself trying to pull me over. Apparently his ribs have been broken and are a constant source of irritation for him now. I can relate!

Last roll was with coach Mark, who just lied flat on his back and let me get on top of him. I just had to submit him, and he was just defending. I went to north-south and grabbed his arm in a kimura grip, but he defended like last time, even though I was teabagging the shit out of him. I eventually let go and reset, going for the Mark-special paper cutter choke but he kept preventing my choking arm from getting a grip. So I failed to submit him, but at least I showed him a variety of techniques I was attempting. It’s odd that I’m trying to choke and joint lock him in order to show him that I’m learning the things he teaches.