BJJ 18.2.2010

I was so tired this afternoon that it required more will power than I normally possess to get to this practice. I guess I wasn't the only one as there was only eight persons attending. Spider guard leg/hand position change game was the warm up this time. I did not really get the idea.

We practiced open guard. Basics of passing in open guard is to keep tight control of the legs of the person whose guard you're passing. Good grip is from the inside of the pants. Then you can either lift the legs up or push them down. If you push them down, try to keep them firmly on the ground and pass going with your shoulder going first. Good control is essential, as always.

Defending the classic sweep from butterfly guard was another topic. When you find yourself about to be swiped from butterfly, nicely push the sweeper to the opposite direction with your head pointing the same way. At the same time lift your knee between the opponents legs. From there going the over the leg (knee first) and passing shouldn't be impossible.

Open guard passing for a while and then two simple techniques to get you back to guard from turtle position. The second one looked like this:


The first one was similar, but from a different hand control. The common mistake is forgetting to control the top persons knees so that you don't accidentally give way for the hooks to get in.