closed guard

In Monday night's class, we did a flow drill and then some rolling. It was a pretty relaxed medium sized class. For a change, there was another woman, and we were partnered for the drill and the first roll.

The drill started with our partner in mount. We escape from mount by trapping one of his feet with our opposite heel to get to half guard. From there we go to lockdown with underhooks and do a whip so that our head comes out the side opposite to his trapped leg. Then we push against his armpit to get to electric chair, but instead of finishing that, we sweep to side control, making sure we take the leg with us and holding it while we establish a tight side control. Then we let go of the leg, take mount and repeat with the partner doing the relevant moves.

I had several rolls and it seemed that I had excellent energy (mental and physical!). Someone even commented that I was "aggressive", but it was more that I was in an excellent frame of mind and really went for it. I had the whiff of success and wanted mooooaaare! So I had a lot of fun. I seemed to hit closed guard and boy, did I make people pay for being in there :-). I hit a sweep but aside from that, most other attempts failed. I think the problem I have is that 1. I'm too comfortable there. And 2. I hesitate to open my guard (which I need to do for most attacks) because I fear to lose the position and get passed. That's stupid, of course. It limits my progress. I don't want guard as a stalling position, I want it to attack, so I need to attack more. And what of it if I lose it? But oh well, another thing to work on.

The good part of the evening was that I came away feeling good. Instead of focussing on my shortcomings (not capitalizing on solid closed guard to attack), I looked at what I did right (successfully break people down in guard, transition to open guard and back to closed, goal-oriented mindeset etc).