Yesterday afternoon, Fabio showed us the choke he used to win 1st place in his division at the Pan Ams. Amusingly enough, the thing I took away from the session that I think I will use the most was not the submission, but a little detail about retaining mount.
Before, whenever I was in mount and grapevining someone's legs, I would have to switch my leg positions, coming up to a high mount before trying something like a kimura or a straight armbar. If I tried to keep grapevining while I applied the submission, I'd get swept and lose it. Fabio showed us a little trick yesterday that allows me to keep protecting mount while I am applying the submissions. [By the way, in case you are a brown belt and also happen to be my instructor, I HAVE seen this before. But I am blond and so it takes a while for these things to sink in. lol!]
While you are attacking the arm, straighten out the your grapevined leg on the SAME side as your opponents isolated arm. This prevents them from rolling and thus sweeping you. Simple. Easy. Effective. Why the heck did I not remember this?!?! ;)
At first, being the genius that I am, I wondered if it would actually prevent someone from rolling. It didn't look like it would work. So, Steph and I took turns trying to sweep each other while the person was doing the "reaper stretch" (yes, I'm giving this common move that probably already has a name another, more retarded name). To my delight, I could not sweep Stephanie, nor could she sweep me.
The real test came during rolling in the evening class. I got into mount and decided not to use my arms for a while and to try to retain the position just using my weight pressure and this grapevining technique. For once in my life, I actually had a slight weight advantage on my male opponent (like 15 lbs), but I this guy has long legs and is flexible and pretty good at wriggling them out of things. The technique worked beautifully. Yay!!
It's funny because I was talking to some other guys at our school about Fabio and the "little things" that make the difference between a technique working and not working. One guy retold a story about how a certain technique required you to place your foot flat on the mat. It wasn't turned in a weird way, the leg wasn't angled oddly.Just put your foot flat on the mat. And yet, somehow, Fabio managed to be able to put his foot flat on the mat better than my friend. My friend said, "I know he's a black belt, but seriously. How can someone put their foot flat on the mat better than another person?!?!" lol
Hopefully all this little mount detail will stay in my memory this time!
Things are really, really bad.
2 months ago
3 comments:
Retarded technique names for the world!
Penny Thomas showed us her preferred mount style - high mount but with both feet clamped on opponent's hips (as opposed to just lazily flopping around on the floor like I mostly do). It's not my cup of tea generally (feels weird, like you're floating on air and about to be reversed) but handy to use sometimes as uke tries to squirm his way out from under.
Or like when you have someone's back... stand on their thighs! :)
Excellent! You develop a good eye for those little things and you'll get very far very quickly.
Every now and again, one little thing comes and changes your entire game because you start maintaining a position (e.g. mount) when you used to shun it and suddenly you're looking for more ways to get to that particular position and BAAM, you're suddenly no longer a guard player :)
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