Because Cesar and some of the guys are at the Euros, Max has been taking the classes. Cesar won Gold in his category, Brown belt (not sure what weight) and that's some achievement seeing that he's been out of action with Knee injuries and surgery for most of the time I've known him.
Max is known for his beasting sessions so I was expecting to be worked pretty hard today. Having started lifting weights again the day before, I was really feeling some fatigue in my muscles and was half expecting to be dropping half way through the warm up. Luckily for me, it wasn't too bad.
In typical Max fashion, the warm up consisted of a lot of circuit training; Squats to Lunges to Press ups to Crunches, that sort of thing. I was feeling the burn in my already fatigued muscles quite early and found myself pining over the Creatine that I stopped taking just before Christmas. Having heard a lot of bad *opinions* of Creatine I decided to stay off it for a while when I was due to cylce off. I certainly feel the difference if I'm training several days in a row but I'm on the fence about the whole thing. Some people advocate taking what is seen as a totally safe supplement that is proven to increase muscular output, while others don't see the point of taking something that you lose the benefits of the moment you stop taking it. I tend to sway more to the side of 'if it's not harmful or illegal then pour it down my throat' and although I no longer take Creatine supplements, it IS in my post workout recovery shake in smaller doses anyway.
Back on topic, we only went through one technique in today's class and that was a nice but fairly simple (in comparison to other things I've been shown) De La Riva Sweep. From the De La Riva guard position, you sit up and switch your legs so that the foot that was on the hip is now wrapped around the near side leg (think Omoplata leg position). While keeping your arm tight around their leg, you get hold of the bottom of their gi and switch it to the hand of the arm around their leg. You then start to move your body round a couple of times to begin to unbalance your partner who will start to follow you round. You then reach around his other knee with your free arm, bring him down on top of you and keep rolling so you end up on top with Side Control easily obtainable. Max did show us an easier sweep from the same switched leg position where you simply sweep the leg with the scissoring motion and push them back with your body, similar to a Single Leg Takedown. In practice I found both sweeps nice and easy to pull off.
Specific sparring was of course, from the De La Riva guard. I started on top and didn't have too many problems getting to a safer position. I find that always push the leg on my hips off and step back slightly to cut off their leverage. It's then possible to put some weight on the knee that they will be hugging and to either go to half guard/mount or start to pass. From the bottom however it's a totally different ball game. I find it extremely hard to even keep control of my partners long enough to think about sweeping before they've pulled my leg off and have started passing. I would like to practice this position more in sparring but it's hard enough to get to anyway and most people that I roll with don't try to stand and pass.
I only managed to free spar with two people after this. The first was Leo; the man with only one gear. I love Leo but he always seems to be fighting for his life whenever we roll and he's injured me (not seriously) a few times from submissions that I wasn't given any time to tap out of. He caught me in a Triangle at one point, I can't quite remember the order of events but I tried stacking and moving round the side to pass and ended up feeling my neck crunch. After that though Leo's energy started running low thanks to his holiday in Thailand for a few weeks. I found that if I pushed the pace, I was able to regain guard and escape from positions that he would normally have nailed me in. A lot of this comes from my training with the Beast and the constant steamrolling I get from him. If I try to always be moving and never stop with him, I find it much easier to push the pace with other people. A few times Leo was trying to push me away and regain guard but I had hold of his collar and was pushing my hips into him to keep close to him and my weight down. There came a point where I was in top position almost in Side Control but one of my legs was trapped, kind of like Half Guard but more to the side. I could stop him from rolling into me by controlling his head but I had no idea how to get my leg out from this position and we pretty much stayed like this for most of the roll.
The other person to roll with me was a White Belt no stripes who I later found out had been training for 3 years and was in fact a Blue belt. He slapped a Triangle on straight out but I managed to pass to the side and escape. He proved very hard to hold down and escaped my Side Control pretty quickly. He also did something that totally nullified me; pushing me as far away as possible with feet on my hips while keeping hold of the opposite arm meant I was totally unbalanced and couldn't even begin to pass. It felt like I was also pretty vulnerable to sweeps from here but I did finally get past the leg and back into Open Guard. This guy was excellent at escaping position and I'm looking forward to rolling with him (stealing all his moves) again next class. He was also taller than me which doesn't happen very often so it's good to get a feeling for what it's like training with someone who has longer legs than you.
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