We had a very short warmup today, consisting of the usual circuit based stuff - Press ups, Sit ups etc etc.
Today's class was all about the De La Riva Guard. This entry is going to be pretty short compared to the others for the simple reason that I didn't really understand what we were doing. It started off simple enough with Cesar showing us the control position, the best grips to get and what to do if the guy pulls his leg out. However, because a lot of us were struggling with the intricacies, he went over it again but then showed us several different things we could try. In my mind they all merged into one big, clumsy sweep. I was pushing legs, pulling lapels, gripping arms but all in either the wrong direction or wrong order it seemed. I managed to get one or two sweeps off but it was more luck than judgment.
Specific sparring from this position didn't go too well. From bottom I was literally just clinging to people and trying to drag them down without any luck. Most of the time, my partner would put pressure on me with his knee to flatten me out. From top I had a lot more success and was passing with relative ease. The De La Riva Guard seems like a pretty tricky position to get used to.
I only sparred with a couple of people tonight, the first, of course being 'The Beast'. I have to spar with Cornell first or I don't have the energy to keep up. It was the typical scenario of me trying to pull guard but getting a leg trapped with him passing into Side Control. Getting a leg trapped is a massive sticking point for me, I can't work out what's causing it. Two things were different about our roll today that made it so much easier for me to put up a fight. Firstly, I was very vigilant about not letting him get head control when in Side Control. Normally he gets it quite quickly, forces my head to the side with his 'strength of the Bear' and i spend the rest of the roll not being able to move. Secondly and possibly much more importantly, I never stopped moving. It's not uncommon for me to just resign myself to having been passed and almost letting them get the position but today I never stopped moving and trying to escape and this made it much more difficult for him to control me. I even managed to escape and get to top half guard. I was so elated at actually getting to a semi-dominant position on The BEAST that I was considering the fact that I may need to put my knee on his face to stop him from escaping. Though with hindsight he probably would have just head butted my knee...
Second roll was with another Blue Belt who's name I never manage to catch. Maybe I should be a little politer and ask next time. The last time I sparred with him I managed to put an armless Triangle across his jaw - not something I like doing at all - so this time when he tried to stack me again and still didn't put his weight on me, I decided to nail the technique again. My arm wasn't quite in under his chin so I resisted the urge to tighten up, let the triangle go, quickly re-adjusted and re-applied for a good Triangle. The rest of the roll was good for me, he seemed to be letting me work, I don't know if he was tired or just taking it easy but I brought the pace down. There's nothing worse than taking it easy with someone who then smashes you like they're in a UFC championship bout.
Overall it was a pretty good class. I felt like I was certainly making progress in sparring but De La Riva Guard still leaves me scratching my head. I'll be trying it when I find myself in that position but I don't know how often that'll be.
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