In the previous class learning about X guard, you can knee reap and bring your partner’s knee to touch the mat, exposing their heel for a heel hook. Today, we learned how to bring their heel to our shoulder by using your hand to cup their knee, straightening their leg, and switching your overhook grip on their ankle to an underhook. Scoop their foot up to your shoulder. From there, you can perform a technical standup to a standing position while maintaining control of their leg. You can take them down by sweeping their other leg or pushing them back. As a person defending in that position, I found it quite effective to break their hand grip and fight for control of my ankle while keeping bouncing on my other foot for better balance.

Today’s training was fun. I listened to the coach and focused more on positions rather than submissions, trying to get mount and transition between mount and back control. I find it’s easier to regulate cardio when you only have to pay attention to one objective, like “get to side control and mount,” rather than overloading your brain to fight for a submission, gain control, and wait for your partner to gas out. The more tired they are, the more open they become for submissions.