Hold On For Dear Life!

Small class yesterday afternoon, which I always enjoy. More time for me to harass Fabio with questions. ;) He showed me a few really cool things yesterday. He had noticed a few mistakes I was making which were leading to my guard being passed and he explained what I need to do to fix them.

First, when someone gets my knees together and shoves my legs down to one side, they usually try to come around toward my front and then fit their hip in next to my side, flattening me out into side control. When they start to pass this way, I cannot go inverted because they are keeping my hip down. What I need to do is bring my elbow and bottom knee together, creating a wall and to hook their neck and head with my elbow.

Hooking their neck with my elbow is the big key. As they try to come around, I am hanging on their neck, so my body just turns with them. I have to keep as much of my body weight on my shoulder that is touching the ground as possible so that I can spin easily.

If they slip their head out from under my arm, I can go on all fours, trapping their arm and then sit out toward their head, putting pressure on them with the back of my shoulder. They go down and then I turn into them, toward their legs and establish side control.

He showed me lots of variations of this concept and now I have a lot of ideas to start playing with during grappling. I am itching to get back on the mat tonight and start trying these things. The only thing is, I have to catch the person's neck quickly as they start to pass, or else I won't be able to hang on them and do the whole turn-table spinny thing. I think it will take me a while to get the timing right. But I am still excited.

Also, Fabio pointed out something else that made me laugh. I was asking him what I was doing wrong with my guard passes. He watched me try to pass guard, then told me that I was doing exactly the opposite of the guard passes people were doing to me that were giving me trouble. If someone usually comes around one side when they're passing my guard, I automatically try to pass on the other side. It's like I'm avoiding the evil pass I don't like even when I am the one doing it! LOL

I didn't realize I was doing that. Fabio was like, "You know for yourself that the other pass works, so use it!" Yeah...sometimes I'm slow. :)