Never too experienced to learn to do something right.

Great training today in the Fundamentals class at Dark Horse.  We went over some basic headlock escapes and then worked on mount attacks and drills.  Fun class and great to see friends there and see them improving.

In the open mat after class, though, I was rolling with one of the blue belts and got caught in his closed guard for a long time.  Matt got on me a bit about staying there so long and this led to a conversation about proper opening of the closed guard.  Man, I have some bad habits to get rid of...I think today was a bit of a wake-up call for me that I've been handling the closed guard just all wrong for a long time.

You see, after you've been rolling for a while with the same person, it's very typical to sort of have minor pauses, places where you stop and say 'hey good one' or just where you feel safe enough to catch your breath.  Inside a closed guard is one of those moments.  It's like, you've worked hard for a long time on techniques, and eventually blown your pass or otherwise screwed up and your opponent has settled in to their closed guard and often they give you a moment's breathing room here as well while they ponder their next move or attack, so it's very natural to just sort of say 'ah, nice one' and even to sort of stay tight to them and not work defensively or not work on -getting out- of this bad situation.  It's easy to stall from there and it's a difficult position to get out of, usually requiring a fair bit of effort, so psychologically it's natural to want to "take a moment" to compose yourself and concentrate on stalling.   This is all bad bad bad.

Nothing could be worse for your game than to fall into this kind of thinking.  I was chuckling at a blog post of someone the other day who said he'd made it his goal to just not get tapped.  I thought "if you aren't getting tapped, how can you be learning anything but stalling"!  Well, the above mentality is just the same thing.  How can you be learning to pass someone's closed guard, when you accept that it's hard and then just try the easiest things you can, hoping they will make a mistake. 

Passing the closed guard can be done a number of ways, but the very first thing one should be doing is working to stand up.  Work on this should begin even as the guard is closed.  There should be no 'settling in for a long battle' moment.  No composure moment.  No 'hey good job' time.  One needs to immediately begin working on the job at hand, which is to stand up.  The double lapel grip is a great one.  Standing up, switching to a single lapel and pushing the knee down works!!  Alternate grip can be same side sleeve (step up first on the side of the sleeve you cross/capture).  The important thing is, stand up!  I've been taught this since my white belt days.  I remember Eliot yelling at us "IF YOU WANT TO PASS YOU HAVE TO STAND UP!!"  I've heard it from every professor I've probably ever worked with for any length of time.  It's the single most common advice I've ever had about passing the closed guard.  Why then, have I been ignoring this advice and settling in for a nice long closed guard battle...a battle which I commonly lose against advanced players.

In another example, I was working with Professor Dudderar the other day after class on simple cross-collar chokes.  Turns out I've been doing them wrong for years, which explains why so many of my collar chokes haven't been working.  My technique wasn't too far off, but still, it was far enough off that fixing a couple of minor points is probably going to double my chances of finishing these chokes.

I guess, what happened today just resonated well with my experience with the cross-collar chokes on Wednesday night created a minor epiphany (btw, see Mike Rowe's comments on peripeteia and anagnorisis here)...I need to keep an open mind toward everything on the mat and in life.  Not just the new things, the old things too.  Not just the new kick-ass move from youtube.com, but the move you learned the first 3 months in your first BJJ class.  Not just the new latest thing in your life, but the thing you take for granted every day. 

I'm never too experienced to learn to do something right. 

I'll try to keep that in mind.