11/24 Tue Class

Light attendance for the Tue class but I was able to give very focused attention to the folks that came. Ray showed his favorite x-guard entry last night so I built on that during the Tue class. Normally I would not have shown x-guard to this group as they were mostly beginner level white belts but they did really well with it. I stressed that x-guard is an advanced position that takes time to develop so they should not get frustrated if they cannot make it work right away.

After warm-ups we did some arm drag drills and butt scoot drills to help with the setups we reviewed on Mon. We made a few adjustments along the way and there was significant improvement from the beginning of the drills to the end of class. I did not spend as much time on the 2 or 3 techniques leading up to the x-guard entry, instead I quickly reviewed them and then focused on the entry itself.

For those not in either class the x-guard entry we were using was from the butterfly guard with a cross collar grip. Straighten one leg underneath of your opponent, jump your butt in, pull your leg back up to your body, swim your arm under the leg to pull the leg onto the shoulder andddddd X-GUARD. Wow as I re-read that description I realize how terrible it is and how much more complicated it is then my discription.

Anyway, there are a lot of little details that you need to get right to make the entry work so we broke them all down and drilled each little step. By the end of class they looked pretty good and I am betting we will see a few x-guards next week. For sweeps and attacks I kept it very very basic. I showed how to come up when the person let's their weight go to the back corner and I showed how to stand up in base from x-guard. I also showed the fine details of how to make the x-guard work, where to place the feet, how to off balance ect. I would have liked to have shown more actually sweeps but they needed the foundation of the position before they could make the fancy stuff work. Now that they have a base to build off of they should pick up the sweeps very quickly.

As an extra incentive to encourage them to keep coming (and perhaps entice a few others to start coming) I showed a little bit of x-guard defense. Normally I dont show how to defend against a technique right after I show it because it stifles the attacker too much. However, in this case I think you really need to understand what the person on the bottom needs to make the position effective, so learning how to defend when someone is under them should also help them learn how to attack when they are underneath. ---> It will also give them an edge over the people who didn't come to my class when we show x-guard again :) <--- (another shameless attempt to boost class attendance).