Getting off my Guard

As a white belt, there aren't many things I can do well. Even the things I feel I do with some level of skill still have room for miles of improvement. But, for where I'm at, I feel that my guard is one of the strongest parts of my game.

That's exactly why I've been trying to avoid it.

I've been working at moving out of my guard and into other scarier places like side control and north/south and knee on belly. To that end, I had a few private lessons over the last few months and have been attempting to incorporate these elements into my game.

I'll be honest. My progress has been slow. For one thing, in order to get to these other positions, I have to do one of two things:

1. Pass the other person's guard at the beginning of the grapple.
2. Get them into my guard and sweep.

My sweeps are generally known to be garbage. But they are getting a little better. The thing that is helping is learning how to feel where the person's weight is and using their momentum against them. As I said yesterday, I am still having trouble sweeping people who are significantly bigger than me. Or who have any other color belt besides white. This-especially the size thing--is a testament to problems somewhere in my technique, but I am not sweating it too much. I've come to accept that I can't do everything perfectly, instantly. I'll have to improve my sweeps little detail by little detail, over time.

Or maybe I'll get another private. ;)

Anyway, I've been opting to by-pass my guard all together and try to be the aggressor in the beginning and pass the other person's guard. This is not my comfort zone. It is especially not my comfort zone when I am going against someone who is bigger or higher ranked than me. But I've been forcing myself to be the aggressor even when I know I am out-matched. If I fail, so what? These are my teammates and this is where I learn.

Since I started trying to force myself into being aggressive, I have started to see small improvements in my guard passes and, once I am in side control, in my ability to STAY there if I want or to move somewhere else. Again, my success in this area goes down as the size of my opponent/color of their belt goes up.

I can also see an improvement in my general movement on top as well. I still look like a floppy, flaily white belt when I move from side control to north/south or mount or whatever. I'm OK with that. Being smooth will come later. When I'm awesome. Which, as Stephanie so aptly put it, will happen on the 2nd of Never. ;)

Here are a few things that aren't going so well:

1. Staying in mount once I get there. If I am focused on staying in mount, I can usually stay there (again, depending on the size/skill level of my opponent). But if I start to focus on a submission, I guess I make space and ruin my base because I find myself getting swept and having to work from guard again or else having my opponent start to move out of the position and me having to establish it again.

2. Side control. Same story. I'm alright until I start trying to work submissions.

3. Sweeps from guard. Oh how I loathe you.

So, my goals for now are pretty general. Keep working on passing the guard/sweeping from guard and establishing a dominant position. I will keep looking for submissions from these positions, but I won't worry about that too much. Right now, my focus is on movement and control. If I can control my opponent, then submissions will come. That's the idea, anyway.