Fancy Guard

Public information announcement:  It turns out if you do like 500 squats/lunges with proper form, your ass REALLY hurts. 

Despite my throbbing glutes and hammies, and an extremely drizzly and yucky Monday morning, I made it to Robot before 7 and was able to get almost 1.5 hours of training in.  Once I warmed up, the glutes and hammies were actually feeling better.  I'm really proud of myself for making it out. 

In the morning class, we are working the X-Guard.  One of the entries in to X-guard requires some swiveling and almost spinning, which usually means death for me.  Once I go upside down or a swivel, I lose all sense of direction and who I am and forget what I am supposed to be doing and where I am.  It's unnerving. 

Today, however, I was picking up on everything really quickly and feeling good about it.  I can see how the X-Guard would be great for someone my size, and I am sticking to my desire to work on open guard offense and defense since I seem to have closed guard and half guard down (as much as a whitebelt can actually "know" something, that is). 

My favorite thing we learned today was the scissor sweep from X-Guard; if you are trying to do the traditional push sweep to standup from x-guard and your partner's base is too heavy, you simply drop your bottom hook to the ankle and scissor your legs in opposite directions against your opponents legs, and BOOM!!! Big guys fall to the mat!! WOOT!! NOTE:  Be CAREFUL getting up from this sweep.  You will likely end up in their closed guard, but you could end up triangled.  As they start to fall, scramble to come up with them and try to keep your hooks active to block that leg. 

I had such a great time today, I'm super stoked to get back for evening classes.  I'm staying for advanced after the intermediate class for the first time.  Exciting!!!