Must Work On... (Grappling Goals)

[Aesopian]

The Grappling Goals thread got me thinking. As ShanghaiBJJ pointed out to me, I've got an awful lot of goals. Part of handling that is consolidating them and seeing which ones fall under the same theme so I can address them collectively.

But I think another part of the solution is to pick certain goals and give myself an assignment to work on them for a certain amount of time. This is to keep me on track, focused on a limited number of goals, so I can progress through each of them in an orderly way rather than jumping around and never devoting enough time and energy to any single one.

The purpose of this thread is to give us a spot to write down our specific goals, how long we will focus on them, and how we'll actually work on them. It could also be used to report on how it goes, troubleshoot, and get encouragement to keep at it.

I'll start with my resolutions:

From the next two months, for better or worse, I will work on:

- Traditional and deep half guard with the underhook.
- Standing passes and the Margarida in particular.

How I'll do it:

- Drill these any chance I have, such as at open mat.
- Do progressive resistance isolation drilling/sparring of each.
- Pull half guard all the time. Switch to half guard from my other guards.
- Always stand to pass.

Setting these specific goals doesn't preclude several of my other more general ones, such as getting the underhook more, always trying to come on top, staying aggressive, etc. These broad goals apply to the specific ones.

[codemonkey76]

My resolution for the next two months is to work my top game.
I will do this by focusing on the following things in open-mat:
- We start from the knees so i will either try to attain the top position instead of
pulling guard.
- From Guard my first option will be to try to sweep instead of submissions

[Gavin LeFever]

I've been wanting to make some sort of "So.. what did you do today?" thread here.

Did you learn something you liked and will use?

Did you tap someone worth mentioning (in comparison to your level)?

Did you hit a move you've been working on?


Last night I threw someone who I respect when I compare his grappling to mine. And I got some RNCs on a lancky blue belt.

Tonight I had some good action. I landed a nice triangle tonight because I made a long post about the steps of a triangle in some thread here this morning and i slowed it down enough to follow my own steps. lol

I also pulled off some keylocks that I don't use enough. I landed some nice guard sweeps like elbow roll and the one where you're in closed guard but you turn 90 and hook under their hamstring. I also got a brabo choke in there because of the aoki video i watched this morning. I did some beautiful armbar work on a really big dude. And I scored a ton of overhook + underhook throws from pummel positions. My knee-slide guard passes are good.

My arm-triangle is one of my best moves but i get a few problems when we're in gi because it gets in the way. I still caught some.


Weak points -

Top turtle. The neck is hard to get when they tuck so tight so I usually lace a hook in and screw around. I'm good at getting a hook and a one-on-one arm control and usually I can flatten them out, but often I can't and they're able to stall if they want. I've got all the moves I need, I just need to spend more time here before we're both fatigued. Often they stall and I let them because I'm resting.

Kimuras - I rarely roll with people who have less arm strength than myself so I rarely attempt kimura/keylocks. I was using more bodyweight to press the arm down from mount and getting some success. The BJ no-gi thread actually helped me remember about using body weight.

Guillotine - i use a lot of shooting takedowns and I'm always in a guillotine. I want to work on not running into any more damn guillotines by working more on my posture during my takedowns. I usually defend but on a good guy, giving your neck for a split moment is more than enough to want to correct it. I know what I need to do but I need to do 1 whole week of having people guillotine me and me defending to drill this into my skull.

I faught an epic guillotine battle last night. I almost tapped about 4 times while I was trying to defend. The guy was an ox and I ended up tapping. It was humbling, but not because who I was tapping to. I have no shame in tapping to him because he is legit compared to myself, but it was humbling because I saw the guillotine coming a mile away, knew it was a guillotine while I was in it and how to defend and I still failed. I'm always in a guillotine.

Oh, and I never.. ever.. ever.. guillotine anyone. Ever since wrestling has drilled the "no reaching back" thing into my head, I've never felt comfortable with a guillotine, yet it is my worst enemy.

[mattmania843]

My plan is to work on standing in the guard and the passes associated with it. I know a few but standing up is a huge problem for me, my balance sucks. If i can learn to stand proficiently and not get swept that would be huge.

[Slithers]

takedowns.

I need to establish a few solid combinations. Right now I just plain suck at them.

I think I am decent at pulling/jumping guard. Id like to atleast be halfway decent at takedowns.

[GuardGame]

passing guard and going for standing passes here. and opening guard.

[The Jake]

Half-guard is my big thing at the moment.

To be more precise, working on 3 basic passes from ontop, 3 basic sweeps from underneath. By limiting your scope to a small number, you see more rapid improvement.

- J.

[1PunchKO]

I think im pretty good at fending off submission attempts, but sometimes i just let them lay on sidemount i don't allow them to pass or work for subs. but at the same time i do nothing to reverse. thats a new goal i guess.

[Samurai Jack]

...cardio.

[ndt/oos]

i start by being mounted and working on getting better position all the time so it becomes second nature. good luck though.