Relearning the Basics

Worked on the standing closed guard pass today at the Dark Horse.  I know that it must be a bit disappointing to the professors to see us flailing on basic passes like this, I know they have such an awesome progressive curriculum in mind for the Dark Horse that this all must seem very remedial, but I think it's probably good to keep these 'advanced fundamentals' classes going from time to time.  You can't just assume that people know all the same basics. 

Honestly, I think, if anything, some of this work on basics in the advanced classes is making a good case for introducing a true "intermediate" class (rather than a combined "Intermediate/Advanced" class), where we can focus on refinement of the basics and introduce the more progressive stuff in the advanced classes.  I was attending the fundamentals classes for a while, because it was good to see the fundamentals, but I never really felt challenged especially because as usually the only purple belt in the room, it invariably fell to me to work with the very least experienced person in the class.  Not that I mind helping others, I'm just saying that it's hard to be challenged to refine your fundamentals when your partner doesn't know enough to really push you on any technique.

I really do like polishing up the basics with some real resistance and today was a great day.  We worked on two basic standing passes, one was the same one I worked on Saturday with Professor Jubera.

Pass 1: Basic Standing Pass
A couple of points here. 

• Kickstands aren't to be used to get up with, they are protection against being broken down when you're standing.  Standing should be the same as if those arms weren't even there. 
• Always stand with your kickstand-side leg first.  I didn't make this mistake often, but moreso when I was standing with my kickstand arm on the left, I would still stand on the right first.  Gotta keep that in mind.
• Get up!  Professor Jubera said Saturday that he wants to start standing in the first 5 seconds of being in someone's closed guard.

Pass 2: Jump up double arm pass (I don't know wtf this pass is called either)
Basically here you just push into both arm pits with straight arms (and you do use them to get up) and sort of jump both legs up at the same time. 
Couple of points:

• Professor Dude likes the reach behind push down on the bottom foot opening from here.  In fact, I'm betting he likes it better from the other pass too.  Need to integrate this into my game, it's a very powerful way to break open the guard.
• Keep the hips forward when you jump up, same as any standing pass.  No ape man postures.

After class, I rolled with Dave and Chris for a while.  Great fun!  I tried to focus on lapel attacks from mount, which is something I'm working on, but honestly, I have a long way to go before I can be really dangerous with these.  I'm about 50X more effective with Ezekiel chokes than I am with lapel chokes on guys at my level.  I -was- able to sink in a lapel grips from the mount, but I just have to keep doing it if I'm going to get good.  I'm going to spend some time actually studying open guard passes; I felt that Chris' open guard was really tough to get around and it was hard to find a good answer to it...and he was doing that annoying thing I do where I just play with the open guard but never seem to find a good opening to sweep. :) 

Wins: Couple of good de la Riva guard sweeps.  I got deep half and swept and passed with it. 
Losses: couldn't finish my arm triangle from the mount (twice).  I was just exhausted.  got to do work on making this more efficient (esp. switching from my arm to my head)