Private with The Dude

Had a great private with Professor Dudderar last Saturday.  It's been a couple of days, but I have lots of notes that I'll try to record here.  Professor Dude wanted me to work on a few holes in my game and a general change of pace (more on that later).

First, he said that I was missing a simple step in my guard replace that would help me tremendously.  I tend to keep my butterfly hook in when people start to pass, I have to stop that completely and keep my feet on their hips.  Indeed, if there was a theme to Saturday's lesson, it was about fine tuning my basics.

We worked a lot on the high guard.  Some notes:
* Flower sweep comes before pendulum because a flower keeps them from stepping up with their leg and blocking.  IF they step up and block, THEN resort to pendulum sweeps, but not until.
* If they trap my arm, we work on the ultra-high guard...the hips over position of the high guard, whatever you want to call it.  From here, you have the -triple- threat (triangle, armbar, collar choke) we practiced last week.
* This is hugely important: Attack with the inside grip.  This is grip is so solid its ridiculous.  I had a guy pick me up while I had this grip yesterday and I just came right up with him and put him an armbar while hanging there.
* The Inside Grip: Other hand goes on the elbow.  Foot on the hip, then push to middle of the stomach and go to old-school high guard if they sit back, high guard if they come forward.
* From the old school high guard, there is one really excellent hand grip that yields crazy amounts of Americana: just grab their hand with both of yours, covering the whole thing.  Push it toward their shoulder and back for the tap.  NOT just to the side, go toward them first

The Badger Sweep:
From the old-school high guard, it's so very predictable that when you're attacking the arm, they will go into super defense mode and cross up their arms.  Whoops, suddenly you can sweep them over easily.  Switch attacking hands, move the original attacking hand under their leg and pull up and scoop while taking them the other way.  Sort of like a flower sweep.  From the old school high guard.

Hulk out escape from technical mount:  I need to remember this.  I used to hit it all the time, but sometime over the summer, I forgot all about it and haven't done it in a long time.  Get back into the habit of hitting this!


And now for something completely different: Gotta work harder to attack...not just defend.  My M.O. is basically to go onto the defensive too early and give up on attacking when in a defensive position.  I need to do some experimenting to attack from what are my traditional defensive positions.  "You must turn the tide if you are to win."