Welcome Back?

We're back from our trip to Winston Salem, North Carolina. Great time with all the kids, though I really missed being able to roll. I missed exercise in general. The food was really good and the only thing that kept me from completely porking out were all of the stairs we had to climb between buildings and in our dorms on the campus of Wake Forest University.

I couldn't wait to get back to BJJ. But tonight didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped. I sort of wanted to take it easy, you know. Just roll light. But that didn't end up happening.

On the upside, we worked an x-guard sweep from half-guard that I really like. Ben has shown us this move at Summerlin a few times, but I had kind of forgotten about it. The person is in half guard. You swim their leg, hip out, get one ankle over their thigh. Then you lift up their body and get your other ankle over their thigh to make the "X". Then you can take them over one whatever side they're off balance. I tried to use this move in grappling tonight. Didn't get the sweep, but it did make enough space for me to return to full guard, which is ok in my book.

Trying to find more things to do from inverted guard. I get there and then kind of flail around trying to find and attack or a sweep. I need to figure out to points of control there, how to use my feet to push and pull at the right places to get someone off balance. Also, I am working on no sitting in inverted guard. In one of my grapples, I found myself stalled there with the other person trying to pass. I was basically grabbing at things--sleeves, lapels, knees, whatever--trying to gain some points of control to sweep or get into position for a choke. But I was really feeling around blind, not exactly sure how to set the stuff up. It's coming though....hopefully.